Latin Dance Festival App

Role:
UX Generalist

Graphic Designer

Tools:
Figma and Adobe

About

Build a personalized custom schedule with easy access to updates, information, and tickets for one of Chicago's largest Latin dance festivals on one platform

Attendees are constantly looking for a copy of the schedule, scrambling to find the event rooms, and not knowing where to look for information in one location. The CSBF app would improve the experience for attendees by providing detailed and updated information all in one mobile application. The CSBF mobile app is a prototype and case study, developed to improve the experience for Chicago Salsa Bachata Festival (CSBF) attendees, performers, competitors, and organizers.

Chicago Salsa Bachata Festival (CSBF) is a nearly five day weekend long Latin dance festival held in Chicago for dancers from around the world and the Chicagoland area to enjoy a weekend full of nonstop Latin dancing. The festival runs Thursday night through Monday morning and has nonstop Latin dancing, performances, and workshops.

Purpose

Enhance the festival experience for both attendees and performers by providing a personalized, customized schedule within the mobile application. This will ensure easy navigation and deliver accurate, quick access to all essential information in a single, central platform.

Quick Information

Solve the most tedious task of constantly searching for information about the event
Attendees need updated information to organize their schedules to experience this dance festival to the best of their ability

Different platforms posting different information causes important information to be missed or confusing to find

Organization

Navigating and scheduling your experience for this weekend long event should be easy, simple, and all in one place with one custom schedule

User Experience

Challenges

Effects of the app

Less stress and more dancing

After investing so much for this one weekend, having a stress free experience would be ideal. less stressful experience because they will have the necessary information, locations, and optional alarm reminders with information of the reminder to help keep them on track of all the fun.

Getting the most out of your investment

The average attendee spends an estimated $300 on average for the weekend hotel stay, an additional $100-$300 to attend the event, and this does not include parking fees, travel fees, and food.*

*This does not include the additional costs as a performer with dance team annual expenses ($25-150 monthly) and the additional fees to prepare to perform at the event like shoes, costumes, makeup, and hair.

Help the user plan for success

Users can now keep an organized schedule of the workshops, camps, tech rehearsals, and all other events that they would like to attend and participate in by scheduling through the app. In addition this is a new resource to provide to the Latin dance community that has yet to be utilized. Making this app would prioritize the experience over profit.

SOLUTIONS

Providing all event detailed information a user needs like workshops, schedules, hotel, parking, tickets, and more in one platform
Creating a custom personal schedule to plan the most beneficial experience at the festival
Develop an easy to navigate experience for all attendees
Share your schedule with friends, teammates, family, or director
Creating a new tool that has not been utilized for this event or community

Personas

Anticipated Users

The target audience for this app would be festival attendees, performers, volunteers, and event organizers from the age group ranging between the ages of 18 - 75 years old.

The user personas I've created address users that are primarily veterans and new attendees and/or performers of the Chicago Salsa Bachata Festival.

Focusing on an age range that would primarily rely on their phones for information, updates, schedules, and plan ahead for the events during the festival.

PERSONA #1

Samantha (Sam) Roblez

Veteran Performer and Attendee

User Goals

Custom schedule of workshops I am interested in only
Be alerted to when tech rehearsal starts
Ready for the curtain call for the night show

User Personal Story

I work all morning Friday so I won't be able to be on social media to find all the information before performance time. I really want to attend as many workshops as possible this weekend.

Hypothesis

If the performers and attendees can schedule their experiences, then they will achieve an experience with easy planning, navigation, nonstop fun, and experience less stress with positive reactions when engaging with the app.

If the new performers and attendees can schedule their experiences and learn the event rooms, it will help them understand the resources and information quickly. This will allow them to achieve an experience with easy planning, navigation, nonstop fun, and won’t miss important things happening, like additional rehearsals or tech rehearsals during the event that are not listed for the public but for their experience specifically.

PERSONA #2

Michael Cabion

New Performer and Attendee

User Goals

Attend one specific workshop
Learn where I need to be during events like tech rehearsal
To add additional team rehearsal reminders to my schedule
Notification on when social dancing begins

User Personal Story

This is my first festival so I am nervous I might miss something important like team rehearsals or curtain call.

User journey map

Sam's Journey Map (Persona #1)

PERSONA Task Flow

Persona #1 • Sam's In-depth Perspective

Sam has a busy schedule and will need to quickly understand the app and where to locate basic information like the Saturday event schedule.

Goals:

Locate information about Saturday ahead of time
Create a custom schedule to prepare for Saturday
Eliminated the need to visit multiple online resources to find the information she needs
The user's task flow may be completed without flaw/failure

UX Task Flow

General User Flow

Containing the example of the experience and smaller site map a user like Sam Roblez may experience when planning her schedule ahead of time by locating the Saturday event schedule through the intended UX Information Architecture.

In this case the user is tasked with finding the Saturday schedule that is available to the general public attendees.

This UX Task Flow demonstrates the user experience intended for the user of the CSBF mobile application.

Information Architecture

Navigation of the mobile application

Ideations

Sketches, stickies, and brainstorming

Map Screens

Sketching homepage, icons, information sections, and understanding what attendees and performers need.

Organize Information

Understanding what information needed to be present consistently or used only once. This helped in grouping pages and understanding the goals of the users.

Create with Purpose

Writing the purpose of each page/tab in the app and understanding again the user's needs by organizing the information for an easier user flow and experience

Low Fidelity Designs

Wireframes, placeholders, and drafts

First Draft/Ideation

Wireframes

Pros:

Simple Layout
A Lots of Information
Organized

Cons:

No room for information Details
Poor font choice
Too many colors
Not appealing experience scrolling or visual layout

Second Draft/Ideation

Wireframes

This was closer to my goals of what I wanted to accomplish for the app, improved the user experience, and had a better layout. This layout has improved the organization of information which was the main concern for the first draft. This also reduced the amount of scrolling necessary for the user during information searches.

Moodboard

The tone of the festival and branding the mobile app.

Graphics

Branding and Style Guide

Logo Variations

Color Palette

Typography

App Icons

Third Draft of Icons

Identifying Weak Communication

The focus of this iteration of symbols, icons, and important information was to create something easy to read, using familiar icons based on research, and developing modern layouts for interactive features like buttons. I created these icons in Figma and Adobe Illustrator.

First Draft of Icons

Building an icon library

I was exploring different icons and ideas that were inspired by Chicago, music, and dancing in the beginning of this process.

After reflecting, getting feedback from friends and family, and testing it with users, I realized these icons were not creating a strong enough sense of familiarity.

This caused the users: confusion, lack of confidence, and lack of visual appeal.

Second Draft of Icons

Building confidence

Creating a stronger library that focused on familiar icons and illustrations increased confidence with users and created better visual communication during searches in the application. I created these icons in Figma and Adobe Illustrator.

Design System

Icons, buttons, and consistency

High Fidelity Design

Video demo of navigation
Screen explanations of High Fidelity Design

Conclusion

Thank you

Flaws

During this process I understood that I had a bias due to my own previous experiences. I have experienced this event for several years as an attendee and performer and also as strictly an attendee only focused on having fun. I understand the needs and pain points based on my experiences and from witnessing the chaos around happening from other team members and attendees. I would improve upon my design choices and visual hierarchy based on further research like surveys and interviews to further understand the user needs.

Improvements

I would love to have this prototype fully coded and developed to see live and in action. I would be able to collaborate with the developer(s), event organizers, and get feedback to improve this concept. I think this is a concept is needed and would be of use in the dance community, for event planning, and for a better experience for festival attendees, performers, and event organizers.