As part of a design sprint, I was asked to improve the voting experience at a Battle of the Bands event. The existing voting system consisted of a paper ballots voting system which wasn't scalable with the expected crowd size expectation.
Based on user interviews conducted with band participants, event volunteers, and event attendees; the following pain points were identified with the current event voting structure:
To create a more seamless user experience for this event, the digital solution we propose should include the following:
Research was conducted based on user interviews of those in attendance. Based on their insights, I was able to extract specific frustrations that they encountered in the voting process. This allowed me to develop ideas that may help solve the problems these users were facing. I also conducted research on other BotB events to get a better idea for the voting criteria to include in our app.
The interviews provided were a representative sample of the feedback from the event attendees and participants.
"Every years for the past ten years I have played in the battle of the bands. This year, I was in one of the four bands. We play funk music and it seems like the rock bands always win. I wish we were evaluated on more than just everyone's overall ranking. Also, we had to play first, which doesn't seem fair because people turned in their paper ballots to vote on us before comparing us to the other bands. Feels like we got the short end of the stick."
Zach, Lead Singer
"We have to do something different with voting next year, It isn't working. Counting 900 ballots while everyone is waiting on the results is too hard. If we use paper again next year, I'm not volunteering. I really want to, though! It is my favorite event."
Smitty, Volunteer Vote-Counter
"I absolutely love this event. It was a little hard to vote, though...we had to submit our ballots after each band played, but I wish I could have referenced the score for the first band because by the time the last one played, I had totally forgotten."
Diana, Team Member
By utilizing the goals, constraints, and frustrations collected during research, I was able to create a userflow that would ensure a seamless and improved user experience. This process allowed me to critically think through the flow of the app and identify the types of screens that would be needed in the experience.
Rapid sketching allowed me to explore different design patterns quickly while helping me understand which ones needed to carry over into the voting app design to ensure simplicity and ease-of-use.
By utilizing a style that would enhance the users experience, I was able to create a simple and functional app design for this event. I used different UI features to better inform/engage the user such as: interactive voting sliders, disabling buttons until conditions were met, and success screen popups.
Design and interactive prototype of a mobile app that solves the problem of the paper voting system for the Battle of the Bands competition.
