Festival Review
"GoGo"
Saving concert attendees time and money by centralizing festival planning, while also expanding the festival community online.
Duration
Role
Type
30 days, September 2024 - November 2024
Lead Designer
Personal design project
Scope
Background: Festivals vary drastically, in how they're organized, location, transportation services, amenities, and more. Festivals are a day to several day long event and a lot of planning is necessary for a fun and safe time. From just the information found online, a festival is always different than what is expected.
Goal: This project tests an app concept that would help users review and research festivals to better plan their experiences.
In Scope
Product strategy and vision
User research and idea validation
Minimal viable product & launch
User feedback
Next steps
Out of Scope
Iteration of MVP for next steps
Strategy
Outline of project phases
1
Discovery Research: Understanding the pains
2
MVP Development: Building an MVP fast to get user feedback
3
Launch and User Feedback: Outcomes and learnings
Discovery Research
Quick Research To Prioritize Action
I first wanted to understand what information festival-goers found helpful before choosing to go to an event or when planning to go to an event. I planned loosely structured user interviews to get the richest understanding of user experiences and potential pains.
I then measured where current solutions existed in the likeliest place users go to book and research concerts/festivals - the internet.
User Interviews
Research Questions:
Is there a need in optimizing the selection of concerts/shows to set people up for the best experience as possible?
Would insight from those who previously attended the festival help better select concerts?
What are they doing now to address this?
Procedure:
Thirty-minute conversations with 8 participants of family and friends.
Results:
These interviews defined the type of helpful information and where they searched for this info - the internet, but predominantly their friends.
Competitive Analysis
I then measured the availability and accessibility of this information on existing online platforms.
I looked for the number of platforms with reviews, how reviews were organized, the services provided to help customers plan for festivals.
I found limited online information, and a large gap in the content my interview participants identified as helpful.
Minimal Viable Product
The Strategy
Developing the simplest MVP - an organized collection of the most useful festival information hand-delivered to users considering or planning to attend.
The final and shipped minimal viable product
MVP Development Process
Choosing a Festival To Focus The MVP
I chose Seattle’s annual Halloween Boo festival because its upcoming event dates (creating a time constraint) and its music genre aligned with what most of my interview participants regularly attend.
Compiling Useful Festival Info
I found every available, internet accessible info on the Boo Festival. Insights compiled and themed in an Excel sheet.
Launch
Boo’s Tips and Recommendations launched one month prior to the festival dates.
The MVP was posted as a PDF to online platforms, including Facebook and Reddit.
Interested individuals were asked to send a direct message to receive the PDF. This allowed me to gauge their interest, and follow up for feedback after the festival.
Advertisements for Boo’s Tips and Recommendations posted to Facebook and Reddit groups.
Outcomes
Overall positive feedback on the concept, readers finding it helpful.
Positive attention to the design and centralized information.
Some users had trouble with the quality of the PDF
Potential extension of the platform to include planning services, as that was a common frustration.
Learnings
There is potential to grow a community within this application. In the posts I made to share the MVP, people helped each other by answering questions in the comments.
Although the MVP was manual work, it provided a fast way to gather feedback on the larger concept.
Piloting a launch is a step I'll do in the future to catch things such as reduced image quality.