Escape

Product Design Project
@ SCADpro - 2 day Design Challenge + further refinement
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OVERVIEW

When offline concerts were cancelled or transferred to online version due to COVID 19, fans were disappointed with the current online concert experience. In remote collaboration with 2 designers, I designed a multi-platform product to enhance immersion in the online concert experience.

MEDIUM

Mobile + Website App

DURATION

Jul - Nov, 2020

MY ROLE

Product Designer
UX Researcher

TEAM

Sarah Hu
Liuyun Hu

CHALLENGE

How might we create a new form of online concert experience that is as amazing as an in-person one?

PROBLEM SPACE

Current online concert experience lacks immersion, participation, and interactivity.

"I miss the atmosphere. The fact that you are surrounded by other people with the same interest as you."

"It's boring that the only interaction I can make with them is sending real-time comments and clicking the like button."

"I miss waving my hands or the glow stick and singing along with the artists during the offline concert."

SOLUTION IN A GLANCE

A new form of online concert experience - Wave your phone as an interactive glow stick, your avatar will do the same as you in a virtual auditorium!

A roller-coaster like journey consisting of 3 main phases:

PRE-CONCERT: Building Anticipation

Dress up your avatar before entering the concert

DURING-CONCERT: Real-time Immersive Interaction

Sing along with the singer, try to top the on-site real-time leaderboard

Voting Events: vote for the next song you want to hear!

AFTER-CONCERT: Transfer the energy into life

Keep the exciting moments in your memory box

All images of virtual characters created via ZEPETO.

THE PROCESS

I was actively involved in all stages of the UX design process:

EMPATHIZE WITH OUR USERS

"Going to concerts is a short escape from life."

After analyzing SCADpro's user survey findings and conducting 7 semi-structured interviews, we gained a better understanding of our target user - concert goers and depicted a typical persona about their motivations, expectations, and frustrations.

COMPARE USER JOURNEY

Missing pre & post concert activities. Monotonic interaction leads to low immersion.

After understanding the flow of both onsite and online concerts, we drew a mixed journey map to show the comparison and users' pain points of the online experience.

KEY INSIGHTS

Being at the concert is only a part of the experience, the entire experience is a whole journey.

The concert experience is a whole journey of building anticipation, immersive experience during the concert, and transferring the energy from the concert into life.

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Anticipation

Building up excitement & expectation increases enjoyment and sense of ritual before/during the concert.

Resonance

Sharing similar emotions and behaviors makes audiences relax, enjoy and immerse themselves in the concert.

Participation

Allowing audience participation to have an impact on the progress of the concert is one source of immersion.

Memory

A real concert experience is a unique memory for each individual. Recalling the excitement fill people with energy.

DESIGN GOALS

Based on the research insights, we further specified 4 design goals as our solution's guideline:

Build anticipation & sense of ritual

Build up users' excitement, expectation, and sense of ritual in pre-concert activities.
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Increase audience participation

Allow audience interaction and participation changes the course of the concert to some extent.

Create resonance

Create an environment where the audience can feel each other's actions and thoughts.
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Collect special memories

Record highlight moments of the concert, make it become a customized souvenir that users can freely recall and share at any time.

LET CREATIVITY TAKES OVER

We brainstormed ideas & prioritized those most relevant to the design goals.

STORYBOARD

We consolidated our ideas into a new online concert journey for Micheal that is more immersive.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Breakdown of the features into 4 top categories within a sitemap

WIREFRAMES

We visualized the main interfaces & created a mid-fi prototype for testing.

USABILITY TESTING

We organized user flows into 5 tasks for early-stage usability testing and refined our solutions through iterations.

STYLE GUIDE

Young, energetic, align with the colors of the concert.

To ensure consistency, we created a Moodboard and a UI style guide for the high-fidelity design. Considering the overall darkness of the concert environment, we decided to use a dark theme for eye protection.

FINAL DESIGN

Welcome to Escape.

LOOK BACK & MOVE FORWARD

Rethinking the possibilities of "the online version" 🗯

Designing Escape made me rethink - as COVID 19 pushes everything to move online and remotely, could the online experience not have to be just a replica/substitute for the in-person experience, but instead be a whole new experience that brings more value to our audience or creates a new business model? To take advantage of such opportunities, we as product designers need to explore the boundaries of technology capability and think out of the box to shape future experiences.

To take the concept to the real world, it's necessary to explore the feasibility of the technology and possible business models. For the next step, I'd like to explore the possibility of introducing subscriptions, virtual currency, or VIP fan services. If possible, I'd like to work with engineers to implement the interactive glow stick functionality and conduct further testing.