UI/UX Design | Event Booking | Online Community
Background
My first personal UX design project is an extension to my senior year architecture design project "Nexus", a mobile interface for event booking and online community of the logistic-powered sports & entertainment facility. The goal of architectural project is to revive the urban industrial wasteland and bring people from local communities together to enjoy indoor sports and community entertainment.
My Role
Solo designer
Timeline
2 weeks
Problem Statement
When nearby residents want to visit the newly built facility, they want to book events in advance and find people with the same interests to hang out together.
Objectives
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An event booking feature for users to make reservations and buy tickets for the ongoing events, sports programs, and entertainment equipments.
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A community feature that allows users to see latest community updates, find friends with same interest, and join group activities.
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Attract more people to visit, enjoy, and participate in the events at this new facility.
Branding Study
The Branding of An Architecture
I initiated the design by diving into the branding exploration of the architecture. The expressive high-tech form of the architecture makes it memorable and distinctive already, so I translated the iconic architectural form into a graffiti style figure-ground logo, representing a sense of duality, the contrast of black and white, the solid and void, and the spray paint of graffiti and its silhoutte cover, echoing with the relationship between the enclosed spaces of indoor sports and the open outdoor flex spaces for exhibition and community activities.
The text logo of Nexus continues to use the same style as the icon logo and uses the sharp and sleek Futura typeface as the base for detail editing. I replaced the regular X character with two straight lines, one crossing through another, creating a nexus point in the center.
Define Scope
Design Scope
The Nexus facility is a logistic-supported sports & entertainment center. Its fundamental operation is the autonomous logistic center that provides middle fulfillment services between harbors and local package centers, autonomous storage rental for logistic companies and individual customers, logistic services for event hosting at the Nexus facility.
The more customer-facing aspect is the sports & entertainment programs, which is what this app is designed for. At the early launch of the project, it is essential for customers to experience the new venue early on and help the facility to acquire its first batch of loyal customers.
Thus, in this design stage, I prioritized:
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the event-booking feature
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the community feature
to help build up a group of loyal recurring customers.
Customer Demographics
As the largest and most developed city in China, Shanghai is home for 25 million people, including the largest population of expats and outlanders from other provinces of China. Every year, hundreds of thousand people from other parts of China come to Shanghai for work, contributing a huge part, if not largest, of the daily life of Shanghainese.
In Jing'An District, around the Nexus facility's site are multiple communities of rental apartments developed for outlanders to live. The architectural proposal of the sports and entertainment program also resonates with the needs of this diverse community, providing a common place for young outlanders to meet new friends, hang out, and find a sense of belonging here.
Low-Fidelity Design
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
The primary menu bar at the bottom contains the homepage showing all the programs and events, the reservation page for users to check upcoming and past bookings, and the community page that shows the latest community feeds and reels.
High-Fidelity Design
The Product
1 - Booking Sports Program
2 - Booking Process
User Journey 1 - Making Reservations
The booking experience is prioritized in Nexus, located on the home page, users can find all the sports programs, entertainment programs, and live & upcoming events.
Different Ways to Reach the Goal
You can check out your current and past reservations at the reservation page. You can also continue booking new reservations using the shortcut button on the page.
3 - Online Community
Find A Group Party to Join and Meet New Friends
The special feature of Nexus App is the online community, helping users to find friends with common interests and join group activities. Users can search for upcoming group events at the facility, book and join sessions.
Future Directions
Autonomous Storage Rental
Package Shipping Service
Plan and Host Your Own Event
The future directions can include logistic services for individual customers and event hosting feature that allows customers to plan and host their own events, using the logistic hub of the Nexus facility to support the event planning.
Thank You!
Information Architecture
User Journey - Event Booking
User Journey - Joining Group Party
