TEDxUofW 2019
In fall 2018, I designed a conference guest experience product as the UI/UX designer in University of Washington's TEDx conference team
Made in 4 month, November 2018 - March 2019
8 min read
CHALLENGE
How might we streamline the TEDx conference experiences?
For the past 7 years, TEDxUofW has been hosting an annual 300 attendee TEDx conference at University of Washington Seattle. This year, the team is surveying how might we streamline the conference experience from ticketing to speaker interaction
Preparation
Internal team Interview
I kicked off this project by conducting a 15 min interview session with different each team sectors. We talked about what their goals are for this year and what are the challenges. From those conversations, I found out three key goal
• Stay in the budget range, then try to make the conference more affordable if we could
• Increasing overall conference awareness
• Helping speakers deliver their ideas and helping attendants better understand their ideas
Cross functional team interview
Finance, PR, Speaker selection, Curating, Production, Design
User Research
I surveyed past conference attendees and found out 3 major learnings.
• The overall conference experience is satisfying, yet our attendees complained about the ticket price being too high and sold out.
• Many people also can't make whole day commitment for the conference and decided not to come.
• Attendants loved that in previous year they could ask speakers questions.
User personas
Personas categorized by familiarity with conference
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Problem framing
Based on our understand effort, conference pricing troubles both the planning team and the attendants. Although planning team had been raising conference awareness, many people don't want to commit since they can't make the whole day's event. Solving the problem around presence seemed to be the key theme of this year.
How might we help more people join the TEDxUofW conference in a memorable way?
Solve
Roadmapping
Since a lower ticket price can encourage more people to join the conference, saving planning cost was something we wanted to work on. The planning team had been paying third-party services to sell tickets in the past. This year we planned to create our own ticketing system to reduce the planning budget considerably.
Project 1: Build our own ticketing system where attendants can purchase tickets with their TEDx account
Value for the team
The team saves money on ticketing services and keeps the conference in budget
Value for users
Our audience will have lower ticket prices and lower financial barrier to join the conference
Since many people don't have time for the commitment, we can consider helping them join the conference online. Joining online could give people a taste of what of TEDx conference is like and encourage more people to join in the future
Project 2: Stream the conference online to let users experience the conference in alternative way
Value for the team
Streaming can spread awareness of the conference.
Value for Users
People having time and finances constraints can watch the conference online
We also want to build on what's proven to be successful from last year and find ways for attendants to interact with the speakers. To facilitate the conversation between speakers and attendants, we wanted to add a QA vote system where people can submit questions to ask speakers
Create a platform for people to talk with and ask speaker questions.
Value for the team
The team can deliver better guest experience outside of the talks.
Value for users
Users can interact with the speakers and make their conference experience more memorable
Ticketing
Built-in ticketing system to lower conference budget and ticket price
Value for the team
The team will have lower spends on ticketing services and keep conference planning in budget
Value for users
Our audience will have lower ticket prices and lower barrier to join the conference
Streaming
Allow users to participate in the conference in alternative way
Value for the team
The team wants to spreading awareness of the conference.
Value for Users
People who don't have time and finances to join in person can watch the conference online
Conversation
Platform for people to talk with and ask speaker questions.
Value for the team
The team wants to give better guest experience outside of the talks.
Value for users
Both online and offline users can interact with the speakers and make their conference experience more memorable
To solve this problem, I had two directions to encourage more people to join the conference: we can first try to lower the ticket price by saving money on existing planning infrastructure. The planning team had been using 3rd party services to sell tickets. Creating our own ticketing system and use Stripe to process payment can reduce the planning budget considerably and help us lower the ticket price.
Finally, we also want to build on what's proven to be successful from last year and create a platform where attendants can talk with the speakers. This feature will help speakers illustrate their idea better through answering questions and make ideas sharing go both ways.
Creating a web product
We decided that a web product has a number of benefits than creating an mobile app
• Lower access barrier since web apps doesn't need to be downloaded and can be used across device
• Streamline the experience as people can buy tickets and watch the conference when they visit the TEDx website
• Build an infrastructure that future teams can easily iterate on
Requirement + IA + visual guide
I created the requirements and user flow for each features in the web app. Since our branding will be used across three teams (PR, design, and web), I also created a styleguide to help shape consistency in our visual language.
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Design
Ticketing
I saw ticketing as the start and a critical touch point of the conference experience. I wanted to make ticketing more memorable, delightful, and simple, therefore I created a skeuomorphic ticket design that responds to attendees' entered information and gradually evolves from a blank ticket to attendees' passes to the conference.
Streaming + conversation
The streaming page's major audience are those who watch at home or work. These people might not be able to stay in the page for the entire conference. To help them quickly catch up with the conference progress, I created the current talk's information and the conference schedule section and put them at findable positions on the screen.
Additionally, I added a section that encourages attendees to talk to speakers below the streaming screen. By providing entry point and high exposure to the conversation features, I planned to build a growth ecosystem where attendants who watch online can engage with the community and share their experience with others to promote growth for the organization.
Responsive design
For users at the conference wanting to ask questions, I designed the dashboard in a responsive layout. The mobile versions has all content and functions as the desktop one and is also styled consistently.
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Reflections
Some insights I reflected from this project:
Walk through your design decisions with different people:
When getting feedback on design decisions, the design team is not the only place for insight. Every time I show the development team what I have, I get valuable suggestions from a less familiar point of view. This has helped me greatly in improving the product's usability and catching blind point use cases.
Iterate and design with content:
Figuring out the right web grid at the beginning of the project felt almost impossible, but much doable as I put more contents in and add more components in the layouts. Even for low-fi prototypes, getting the content early will be helpful to the see design holistically.
