Role
User Research
Product Strategy
UI Design
Interaction Design
Usability Testing
Tools
Figjam
Notion
Maze
Figma
Otter
Timeline
5 weeks
The Problem
Currently, the search experience for available concerts is limited to a single dropdown menu, which can be underselling for the diversity of acts SoFar Sounds offers. From a business perspective, SoFar Sounds is interested in making it easy for music lovers to book gigs.
The Solution
To assist new users in engaging with the platform and becoming returning users, our team developed a solution that allows for a more customized search experience. Users can now find concerts based on their location, date, concert settings, and genre preferences based on their favorite music app data.
Usability Audit
We started our research by conducting a usability audit of the current interface. This helped us better understand their pain points, WOW moments and friction moments within the existing interface, ensuring our solutions would be applicable and enhance the experience.
User Interviews
To dig into the actual needs of our users and to create the necessary empathy to put ourselves in their shoes, we conducted a series of interviews with a set script. After the interviewing sessions, we synthesized the recordings with Dovetail, and with the results, we created and refined a tagging taxonomy to visualize patterns and create an affinity map.
Business & User frustrations
According to SoFar Sounds data, the main issue with their webpage is the users' inability to discover relevant concerts. Through our Usability Review, we noted that despite the webpage's good usability when using the search options, the results could be overwhelming. Even considering the business plan of making a surprise concert, users would need extra help deciding between many events.
Primary Frustration
When trying to find out a concert, users are confused or overwhelmed, either by the unfamiliarity of the concept or the number of shows available, which results in dropping the search and exiting the webpage.
Competitor Benchmarking
To ensure our solutions would be competitive within the current market of concert bookings, we conducted a competitor benchmarking. We analyzed Ticketmaster, our direct competitor, which has a very intuitive and engaging interface, and Airbnb, our indirect competitor, which offers an easy-to-use experience.
Problem Space
Even though the webpage works, its usability and social engagement could be improved. Despite the webpage having information about the desired core experience, people tend not to read much and leave the webpage in confusion.
This leads to several questions about "How Might We" improve the experience as a whole.
How Might We…
Integrate social profiles to create affinity and relevance?
Improve the search bar without losing the sense of surprise?
Increase the database of subscribers to our mailing list so users are informed about upcoming events and promotions?
Offer a short, intuitive, and clear explanation about the SoFar Sounds experience?
Ideation
To translate our ideas to reality, we went through a crazy 8's ideation process; based on the results, we created a priority matrix to give the importance needed to the plethora of ideas showcased, sorted by impact and effort axes.
What can we add
Filters to the search bar
Connect with music apps
What can we improve
The hierarchization of the search bar
Event cards
User Flows
Next, we mapped the current user flow from the landing page to the Booking a Ticket end screen. Subsequently, we mapped an improved version, considering the new and enhanced functionalities suggested.
Rapid Prototyping
Due to time constraints, we created pages that focused only on the new search experience for SoFar Sounds. This included modifying the search bar to be more interactive and intuitive for users, plus adding the new functionality of linking users' music apps.
Styles & Components
To achieve a seamless and cohesive experience within our high-fidelity prototype, we kept the existing branding styles and components in our interface, maintaining consistency throughout pages, adding only the necessary new buttons and updating the event cards, minimizing confusion when handing this off to a developer.
High Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
Since the educational experience constraint the amount of testers and the fidelity of the prototype our testing resulted satisfactory but importantly we found out our original approach to the problem wasn't the correct one, since the business model is mostly based on the element of surprise and we didn't manage to create an experience surprising enough -considering the elements that create a memorable surprise- so we concluded we should go back to the ideation and interviewing process asking different questions, this time not based on the ticket buying process but on a surprise experience, either digital or physical, so we can reenact or recreate a surprise element in our digital solution.
Key learning
Even if it sounds easy, asking the right questions and solving the correct problems is not as straightforward
Next steps
Back to the research and ideation stages!