The energy of an event, online

Summary

As a team, we went through our current virtual events product and identified every single problem area that we think needed to be solved.

We identified over 40 issues, and then performed multiple exercises with stakeholders to narrow down the selection and rank the top problem areas.

After looking at roadmaps, identifying level of effort vs impact, and discussing with leadership, the virtual attendee arriving experience was selected to be our problem to solve — and we. were. thrilled!

Role

Product designer

Team

Ultraviolet (3 designers)

Timeline

16 weeks

Problem

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the world into a virtual landscape, and the events industry was no exception. With events going virtual, our product wasn't as inviting or helpful as the in-person experience.

How might we...

1

help attendees join quickly and easily?

2

create the same excitement and energy of an in-person arrival?

3

orient and onboard attendees so they feel confident and ready to go?

Solution

The solution we designed is a multi-step flow to gather information from the users while simultaneously giving them a more colorful, and personalized event experience as soon as they enter the event.

Key Details

Quick and easy: Users are able to join directly from a pre-configured reminder email through a magic link that takes them right to the onboarding process — bypassing the current username, password, and verification code process
Excitement and energy: We included lots of animation to bring the experience to life as well as incorporating event branding in the login page and stats of who else is here with you to make the user feel less alone
Orient and onboard: The user starts in the system with a virtually complete profile, ready to network with others, watch sessions, and more.

So, how did we get to the solution?

Timeline

Research

Using previous research done by our research team around virtual events, who attends them, and the kind of scale they are being produced on, we crafted our virtual attendee persona and mapped out the different scenarios we might find them in

Persona

Goals

Join the event quickly
Feel the same excitement and energy of an in-person check-in process

Painpoints

Forgetting about the event
I’m bored by the experience and don’t look forward to my events

Scenarios

Large complex events
Small external events
Internal events

Brainstorming

We kicked off our designing with a good old fashioned brainstorming session. We gathered individuals from sales, product, client services, ux, and dev in to a (virtual) room and threw some stickies on a FigJam file split by the different “how might we...” statements we identified at the beginning

Design & Feedback

Iteration 1: Interaction Pattern

The step by step modal approach (option 1) was the favorite of the bunch because it felt visual, interactive, and lightweight. So we took this a step further.

Iteration 2: Mid-Fi Prototype & Feedback

In the second iteration we started mapping out the flow of the onboarding experience and figuring out which steps were necessary for this. We worked closely with another UX team that was currently working on the profile page of the virtual events platform to do this.

We decided to move into a full page layout with vertically stacked content to make it feel like more of a grand entrance, while remaining simple and intuitive feeling.

Iteration 3: Mid-Fi Prototype & Feedback

In this iteration we wanted to include a little more branding from the beginning in the sign up page, and solifidy some of the interaction patterns.

We showed this to actual attendees in a moderated walkthrough of the flow. (Which was SO FUN!!!! I looove user testing)

😁

The badge was unexpected but a pleasant surprise

🙅‍♀️

Recommendations at the end didn’t provide a whole lot of value

✅

The whole process felt low-effort so they didn’t mind completing the information

🧐

Uploading a photo wasn’t always clear how to do

Final Solution

After tailoring our design based on the feedback we had gotten from attendees, planners, and internal usability testers. We ended up with a final experience that we are excited to see incorporated into our virtual events platforms.

Reflection

This was the first real product design experience I had in the workplace where I got to see the full design through. Coming from the design systems team where it was much higher level and broad work, this was really cool to see each part come to life.

Even though product scope and tech limitations cramped our creativity in certain areas, we were still able to design an experience that looks and feels intuitive while effectively getting the job done.

Some key things I learned:

Go crazy creative with the design at first, then scale back
Including product leadership from the beginning is always best
Share early and often, always!!
Even in a legacy product, there is always room for innovation