The Main Event

Project Brief

For this project, your primary focus will be to create an experience that is centered around a particular user AKA User Experience Design (UXD). The project will be divided into four smaller parts that, when combined, will be a complete and cohesive body of work. You will begin the project by selecting  an event. This event can be based on an event that already exists, like a music Festival, but should not be a direct replica of one. For example, you can select a music festival as your event, but not Coachella. The content must be unique to your event.  Or you can get really creative and come up with your own unique genre of events (Conference for Sloth Enthusiasts, perhaps). 

After an event is chosen, you will develop a User Persona of your ideal event attendee. Once the persona is complete, you will write a short description of said event keeping in mind the needs of your chosen user. Based upon your user persona and updated event description, you will develop a landing page for your event. The landing page should include all relevant event information (like date, time, location, etc.) and address any concerns of your user. Following the landing page, you will create an email confirmation. We will be operating under the assumption that your designated user has visited the landing page and registered for the event. The email will act as a followup contact with the user to reiterate any important information as well as supply  any additional tid-bits he or she may need to know about their upcoming event. Lastly, you will be designing a companion app for your event. This app will be just that, a companion, something the user can refer to just prior to or during the event to get updated information in bit size chunks, optimized  for a mobile platform. Think of this as something your user might use to get information like keynote speaker times, room numbers, or other venue information or changes.  

Learning Objectives

• to gain a better understanding of user experience design and the user journey
• be able to incorporate different methods of design research to support your design such as user personas, market research, etc. 

Deliverables

• User Persona
• Mockups of email confirmation
• Working prototype of the landing page and companion app

Reflections

This is always one of my favorite projects in my classes. Students seem to enjoy the flexibility of choosing their own subject matter based on their own interests. I do find that students are sometimes intimidated and/or overwhelmed by the multi-faceted nature of the project so while I have traditionally assigned this as an individual project, I think a group assignment may be even more beneficial to the students in the future.