Role
User Research
Product Strategy
UI Design
Interaction Design
Usability Testing
Tools
Figjam
Dovetail
Maze
Figma
Timeline
5 weeks
The Problem
Currently searching for concerts is only limited with a single dropdown menu. By clicking the single dropdown menu, nearby cities from user's location and most visited cities will appear. In addition, we were targeting new users to Sofar Sounds who are searching a local gig. The current website is not easy for them to understand how it works and what is all about Sofar Sound.
The Solution
Our focus is to improve more flexible searching options that allow users to search by location, date, even more specific locations or flexible date selections for those who are just flexible in terms of date. We have kept in mind that the searching function shall be as easy as possible to use the product comfortably without feeling any frustration at the searching concerts.
Usability Review
We started off this case study by conducting the usability audit to better understand the current product. We studied how the current single dropdown menu works and gives some positive and negative outcomes to turn into any better function. We also noticed that the current setting does not make it clear for new users how the Sofar Sound works and what is all about it. In addition, the typography is something it could have been better for users to read comfortably. Right now, every typography is written in a big size, and some are even hard to concentrate on reading.
Business & User frustrations
The current searching setting only allows users to search by location. Selecting by date or narrowing down the locations are not possible. For new users, it is not easy to understand about the concept of Sofar Sound as well.
Primary Frustration
When searching concerts, users are limited from searching with other various searching options, which results in having too much information to narrow it down, and taking time to find a most suitable concert.
Secondary Frustration
When getting to know about Sofar Sound a new user need to look for information about the Sofar concept, which might result in users giving up to engage with product or being lost to find an information.
Competitor Benchmarking
Next, we conducted the competitor benchmarking to understand the industry standard and get some ideas from other competitors how others allow users to search for concerts. We have picked up Lyte "festticket.com" as a direct competitor and ticketmaster as an indirect competitor. Additionally, for search function we looked into airbnb website to get some ideas since we found its searching function are well-developed and might be a good hint to apply for Sofar Sounds.
Direct Competotor from Lyte(festticket.com)
Indirect Competitor from ticketmaster
Key learning 1
How the massive information can be organised and set in place where users can still easily access upon their needs.
Key learning 2
Other competitors provide more filtering or searching options. It makes users easier to reach the information what they are interested, especially the city where large amount of events are taken place.
User Interviews
We conducted a user interview to gather the qualitative data and to understand deeply with users needs and frustrations upon booking or searching a concert.
Before doing a user interview, we made some scripts, which focused on our problem spaces. We ensured that we asked open-ended questions and followed-up questions.
Key learning 1
Availabilities with calendar and showing all availabilities at a glance in a single page help users to search for the concert date, especially if the events are taken place multiple times in a day. This will prevent users from going back and forth between different pages and stay in a one page where users can find all schedules of the particular event.
Key learning 2
Filtering option would be very useful only when it is built and suited for particular product and service. Depending on events, the filtering options shall not be built generic. For certain events, users are willing to travel to other cities. On the other hands, users value more on the nearest locations, the availabilities of the particular zones at the event, or users might want to filter based on the date.
Affinity map
After the user interview, we transcribed our user interview using Dovetail to organise and synthesize the data. By incorporating the tag taxonomy to highlight the nuggets of information within the interview, we could visually identify the frustration users have felt through the user's experience.
How Might We…
Information Architecture
We created the IA for better understanding of how we could improve the hierarchy of information.
Key learning
Information Architecture allowed us to understand details how the page is structured even the smaller parts. We looked it into how we could implement to solve our problem space. It helped us to improve at the later stage when we design the compositions.
Ideation
We moved on to the ideation phase. Based on all the previous researches, we decided to conduct "Crazy 8s", which forced us to design in 8 minutes. We tried to come up as many ideas as possible within a limited time.
We have also came up with all the solutions and made it prioritised what solutions could give big impact with less efforts.
This process helped us to set the clear task to move on to the designing.
What can we add
We decided to add a searching by date function. This will allow users much easier to look for one of the Sofar concerts based on their schedules.
What can we improve
We decided to improve the introduction about how Sofar sound works out. Sofar sound provides music events in a unique concept. Therefore, it is important for new users to understand what is Sofar about.
We also decided to improve location search by more precise area or district in a city, instead of just a city.
User Flows
At this stage, we created the user flows for both current flow and implemented flow. During this phase, we have been thinking the most effective way for new users to get to know about the product.
On the current flow, it is still unclear what exactly Sofar sound is all about. For example, on the current flow users need to look for information by clicking or jumping to other pages.
We came to the conclusion that single-step process would make it easier for users to get to know about the service. Potentially, it would be more effective to make users engage with the service. Therefore, Having considered about varieties of users, we decided to utilise the landing page to simplify the flow; so that, the users are able to gather information at one place.
Current user flow
Improved user flow
Rapid Prototyping
When we moved on to the wireframe phase, we focused on the top landing page and searching function. The image below is one of the wireframing sketches.
Styles & Components
Summarise the styles & components that you created…
High Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
I conducted the usability testing by using Maze. I prepared 4 open-ended questions to ask if users can easily understand about the concept of the service as a new user, and if they have any struggle upon searching for a concert or filtering the search option.
Test outcomes
The key performance indicators at the Maze has marked 67 score. As a new user, majority of the users found that it was easy to get to know how Sofar sound works and what is all about. In terms of searching function, the majority of people could find a way as instructed by the questions. There were some cases that they did not make it because of an unexpected path.
Three key learnings
1. Since Sofar offers an unique music concert, there are limitations for searching functions. Music genres are disclosed intentionally. Through the user interviews, I learned that how users want to search for a concert depends on occasion.
2. Usability testing has shown that as a new user, majority of them were easy to learn all about Sofar sound. Simple step increases the accessibility.
Next steps
Based on the usability testing, there are some small details such as "clearing the filter all at once" or "Chevron in the Tab" can be improved. In addition, since the location based search plays an important role, it could possibly help users to search the gigs by adding the map to show district in a city after selecting a city. That way for the users, who are visitor in other cities and do not have an idea about it , to search for a local gig.