Accessibility-Forward Cultural Experience
Unifying and delivering local events and their relative information, providing users a singular space to find and curate a night out.
Role
Product Designer
Responsibilities
Product Designer
Visual Designer
I saw the need to reshape the experience of curating a cultural night out. Currently, gallery openings and their accessibility, features, and information, are not consolidated on one platform, therefore not easy to find and access.
The objective was to create a service that provides a dependable, informative solution for locals to find and attend nearby events, while being informed of their amenities such as parking, restrooms, accessibility, and more.
About
Outcome
As users are looking to find and attend local cultural events our app, Plaza, was crafted to seamlessly bring users to events they love. With accessibility, personalization and empowerment in mind, Plaza not only showcases local events to users, it keeps pertinent information at the forefront. Wheelchair access, parking, restroom availability, hours, location and more are all easily at the users fingertips. No more second guessing about attending an event, Plaza helps you confidently get-to and enjoy the experiences you want to see.
Final Mockups
Context
Curating a cultural night out with friends can leave many unknowns. Challenging roadblocks such as details about the events, including accessibility, features, and general information, are scattered across disparate platforms, resulting in a lack of accessibility. Our app seeks to rectify this issue by providing users with a centralized and user-friendly space to efficiently plan their cultural outings. Users can effortlessly explore upcoming cultural events, plan outings with friends, showcase art exhibitions to visiting family, and coordinate dining plans surrounding these events. This dependable, informative, and technologically advanced solution, fosters a more robust connection between users and their local cultural community while alleviating common challenges associated with event discovery and attendance.
Images from Voices Embodied: Uplifted at the Design Museum of Chicago.
The Challenge
The Product Goal: The ultimate objective of the Accessible-Forward cultural experience’s final design was to craft a seamless experience for locals looking to attend a cultural night out. Our metric of success was how many users felt comfortable and knowledgeable after using our app, to attend a local event.
Approach
My design approach was to research the market and immerse myself in products currently available for users wanting to attend a cultural night out in their city. By combining functionality, aesthetics, and community engagement, I strived for an app that could be an essential tool for art enthusiasts, fostering a vibrant connection to gallery openings and the art world.
Exploration - To begin, I conducted user interviews, mapped journeys, prioritized key features and designed a curated night out for the user.
Ideating - After creating wireframes, I improved the design my presenting ways for the user to go through the journey. I made various versions to see how users would interact, and made changes based on these interactions. This helped me understand the user experience and make sure the final design worked.
Refinement -Conducted extensive testing with a diverse group of people, including friends, coworkers, and family, to find out what problems they had and discover ways to make the design better. Used the feedback from this testing to make small improvements to improve how users interact with the design, specifically in areas they were worried about. This cooperative and feedback-focused method made sure the final design met user needs and expectations.
Presentation -I made a powerful presentation that told the story of how Plaza would change the ways users planned their nights out. I used visuals, user stories, and important points to show how valuable and impactful the new experience is.
Explorations
I used diagrams to carefully map out how users would move through different tasks, considering all possible scenarios. This visual guide helped everyone understand how users interact with the system in different situations. From there, I landed on an MVP to design out as the most important User Flow.
Ideating
The process of generating ideas for design elements was crucial in determining how users would view exhibitions and open events. I came up with and tried different ways to show users relevant information and received their feedback. This back-and-forth process not only made the design better, but also made sure that the final product matched what users wanted, giving them an easy and enjoyable way to quickly view information about gallery exhibitions.
Final Design
In the final design, I refined my initial ideation based on continued user feedback and testing. With continued interviews and prototyping, I was able to further determine what flows were creating successful user journeys and experiences. From there, I narrowed down the MVP into a successful streamlined experience.
