Organization

Eventology Solutions

Timeline

3 months, Ongoing

Responsibilities

User Research, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping and Testing, Management

Role

Art Director, Product Designer

Exhibit Hall - Event Ecommerce Platform

Overview

Eventology Solutions provides efficient, convenient, analytical, and powerful event-management tools available as white-label apps or within its flagship app, Fan Guru.

Nestled within that environment is an integrated ecommerce platform known as Exhibit Hall, where artists, vendors, exhibitors, merchandisers, organizers, et al. can sell directly to consumers.

I was the lead strategist, director, and designer for taking the feature from a static event-exhibitor profile link to a bona fide ecommerce and discovery platform.

ChallengeS

Create a working shop and exhibit experience. Juggle with creator support during the early tumultuous 2020 pandemic.

Approach

Design for creatives and their customers first, and our own pockets second. Take advantage of Square, Stripe, and other user-friendly integrations.

Key Takeaways

As this came from a place of passion, it was well received upon launch and had hundreds of pre-release signups.

  • STRATEGY: Zac Cooner, Rei Augustine, Micah Green

    ART DIRECTION and LEAD DESIGN: Rei Augustine

    TECHNOLOGY DIRECTION: Taryn Vitale

    LEAD DEVELOPMENT: Shea Close, Darius Tall

    DEVELOPMENT: Braulio Lomeli, Blake Engquist

    QA ENGINEERING: Reshmi Ranjith, Karlo Martinez

    CONTENT MANAGEMENT: Toree Hartman

    COPYWRITING: Brittany Ruley

Understanding the problem

While reaching out directly to hobby event artists, exhibitors, and the like during 2020 lockdowns, I conducted a “pain”storming workshop to uncover issues felt by creatives in the event space as well as users who were familiar with our app. It was revealed that:

  • Both customers and sellers were frustrated by the lack of shopping integration with other then-popular event apps;

  • Sellers feared loss of business due to sudden event cancellations;

  • The profile linking between exhibitors and the events they attend within our app was seen as inadequate.

Vision and solution

It was clear from these findings that the new version of Exhibit Hall needed three solid foundations:

  • We want sellers and customers to be able to easily find each other within virtual event environments to make direct transactions;

  • We want to digitally recreate the event floor exhibit hall experience as much as possible;

  • We want shop owners to be able to keep their business and event plans going regardless of circumstance.

Despite this being a unique situation, it was still imperative to conduct market research on potential competitors and industry leaders. Once compiled and shared to team execs, I got to work on another ideation workshop.

Designing the solution

Between sketching, mapping, wireframing, and prototyping, I addressed these issues with some possibilities:

  • Simplifying the monetization and fee situation;

  • Standardizing style and UI pattern across the board;

  • Allowing personal interactions one could get in-person such as direct messaging and tip jar;

  • Integrating systems into one cohesive management system for internal staff, event organizers, and shop owners.

Working with the developers

I created high fidelity mockups in Sketch and imported them into Invision for interaction and inspection. Large batches of the designs were also exported to Sympli where, as well as with Invision, the developers could inspect the file assets, dimensions, HTML, and CSS.

We also iterated over agile sprints to expand the ecommerce feature into ticketing.

Next steps

A lot was learned from the previous project in Backstage, so it’s no surprise that this one saw even more scale and success with users and internal staff alike. Potential next ventures would be integrating other ecommerce in the event space, such as fundraisers, bidding, and content creator merch … …