Animal Liberation Conference
Animal Liberation Conference attendance, made easy.
Duration
3-week design sprint
Team
Shokai Sinclair, Joy Musillo
Role
UX Designer (Researcher, UI Design)
I led the team on designing the onboarding process, home screen, event screen, and scheduling feature.
The annual three-day Animal Liberation Conference brings animal activists from around the world together through hosting events, workshops, and lectures in Berkeley. The conference empowers attendees to take bold actions to achieve political change for animals.
Goals for this project:
Reorganize app content and information architecture
Expand on current app features while maintaining the confidentiality of the attendees
How might we bridge the gap between the app and user’s mental model?
THE PROBLEM
The app was challenging to use because it didn’t organize information in a way that match the user’s mental model. Users didn’t know how to navigate because the app took them straight to the scheduling page without a home screen.
THE SOLUTION
Restructure how information is presented in the app. Introduce home screen, new scheduling screen, and categorized notifications.
Solution
Simple Home Screen
Clear and simple home screen that highlights important information
Clear Personalized Schedule
Days are shown in calendar view
Displays RSVP’d events on the schedule
Categorized Notifications
Categorizes different types of updates
Bright orange color to indicate latest information
Expand/collapse animation for clean layout
Research
Understand Big Picture
During the meeting with our client, we defined the business goal and project constraints.
Business Goal
Acquire new users
Increase downloads of app
Constraints
No sensitive personal information
Pre-determined target users from the client
Users’ Needs and Challenges
Interviewed 5 participants to understand their pain-points.
Users’ needs:
Conference schedule
RSVP feature
Speaker and event information
Housing and meal information
What was challenging for the users:
Lack of important information
Missing home screen and login screen
Uninteresting UI
Poor affordances - didn’t show attending status
Language barriers for non-English speaking users
Prioritizing Features
Key features were determined using high-low impact and high-low effort matrix.
These include:
Universal style guide
WCAG compliance
Announcement feed
Personal schedule
Chant lyrics
Profile privacy preference
Personas
Carl the Curious
First time participating at Animal Liberation Conference
Curious to learn more about DxE’s protests and events
“I want to help all dogs and cats to be as happy as my dog, Max (corgi).”
Olga the Organizer
An organizer at DxE for a year
Want organizers from other regions to access information easily
“I just want people to find the information they need online so I can use my time better, instead of replying to emails all day.“
Design Ideation and Iteration
Mid-fidelity wireframes were created with the results from comparative analysis and focus features.
Next Steps
Multiple Languages
Provide language options in the app
Understand the demographics of the attendees (possibly by sending out surveys) and prioritize most used languages
Profile Setting
A profile where users can change their anonymous status
Chat Feature
Connect and network with others at the conference
Key Events
Have key events link to in-app schedule
Purpose of which is to keep the users in the app rather than directing them to external site such as Facebook event page so that users can keep engaging with the app
Reflections
Communication is key
I’m very honored to have the opportunity to work with Maya. He not only communicated his vision but also gave us flexibility in designing the deliverables.