SKELETON CREW

MY ROLE

UX Research and Design, Graphic Design, and light Web “Development” using Wix (no coding) on a team of three UX experts hired by the event’s founder to revamp their website in anticipation of their 10th anniversary.

GHOULISH

GOALS

Our team set out to design an information hub, which would include a new descriptive map of the event, in order to provide our target audience with event details.

The founder that brought on our team found herself flooded each year with questions via her personal Facebook. So we set out to measure our effectiveness by the ratio of this year’s attendees to the number of questions asked via Facebook Messenger compared to previous years.

DEADLY

DELIVERABLES

Website re-design
Website content
Brand guidelines
Logo
Map of the event
User Research (interviews, surveys, etc.)
QR Codes for posters that link to the website
Event Signage

 Step 1

Discover

Interviews

I interviewed local families to hone in on the type of information they would need to decide if they would be interested in attending Mannequin Night. I then interviewed local restaurant owners to determine how they would go about becoming a vendor at Mannequin Night.

AFFINITY MAPPING

After interviewing the founder, local families, and local business owners, we took all our findings and compiled them to pull out high-level themes from our research.

  Step 2

Define

Problem Statement

Understanding the Problem in Clear Terms

Participants of Mannequin Night event are struggling to find information about the event. This happens both before and during the event when they are seeking information. This occurs because of a minimal web presence and lack of an organized information center. This is an important issue to solve because attendees, volunteers, vendors, and sponsors need information about the event to participate properly.

Hypothesis Statement

How Can We Solve the Problem?

Our Mannequin Night website will let users find information about the event which will affect all participants (attendees, volunteers, sponsors, and vendors) by giving them an all in one hub to get information -including a descriptive map. We will measure effectiveness by the ratio of event attendees versus questions messaged via Facebook Messenger.

 Step 3

Develop

Information Architecture

Site Map

After our user interviews provided clarity on our users’ information requirements, we set out to map those requirements in a way that matched users’ mental models.

This was a “living” map that we updated as we learned more about users. Each round of user interviews gave us further insight into how we could more effectively organize the site.

Prototyping

Low Fidelity Wireframes

With our sitemap in place, we began prototyping. We started with a mixture of paper prototypes and lo-fi wireframes before gathering early user feedback.

EARLY FEEDBACK

Making Adjustments

A lot of the feedback at this stage allowed us to course correct early before we spent too much time in the later stages of design and development. We were able to catch user concerns we hadn’t yet heard. For example, we heard from one parent with young children that they’d be concerned about how scary the event may be. This may not even go if it’s just going to frighten their kids!

Prototyping

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

The lo-fi feedback was invaluable in forming the mid-fi wireframes. We added some basic interactions to the prototype using Figma, and suddenly, we had something that we users could click through and interact with like a real website.

CONTINUOUS FEEDBACK

More Changes Prior to Development

We were able to validate a lot of our early direction with users at this stage. Users were navigating the site and finding information in record time. If this was the final site, we would have already made huge improvements over the original website.

However, at this level of fidelity, we were able to uncover more nuanced user concerns. For example, a food truck vendor had questions on the technical details on how to become a vendor. In fact, they said that these questions were the kind that could make their ultimate decision whether or not to attend the event.

  Step 4

Deliver