Verve

Timeline: 2 months
Role: Designer, Researcher

Imagine wanting to explore London’s vibrant art scene, but don’t know where to start - just a few taps on your phone, and the app connects art lovers with events that match their tastes, making discovery easier and more engaging. Over the course of a few months for a course case study, I interviewed users, addressed pain points, and mocked up different prototypes. The result is Verve, a ticketing and social app focused on personalised user discovery of art events in London.

The problem

Museums and galleries in London are eager to draw in more visitors, while many art enthusiasts crave more information about events. The current apps just weren’t cutting it—they lacked personalization and relevant details.

The solution

The main aim of Verve? To be an app that not only advertises and serve as a ticketing platform for events, but also fosters a community among art lovers.

How might we present more meaningful information about an art event to individuals actively searching for one?

Research

I started research with the main goal of trying to figure out what motivates users - how do they decide what events to attend? And what are the deciding factors that actually help them how to prioritise (or de-prioritise) an event? With this main question, and with the hypothesis that there’s a real business opportunity for cultural institutions, particularly galleries, with declining attendance and audience engagement, I had plenty of questions to explore.

Competitive analysis

What desktop research quickly revealed was that interest in the arts will continue to be strong. In the UK in 2023, museum and gallery attendance was up 24% compared to the previous year, with a broad age range of Millennials and seniors. It’s an interesting dilemma with overall audience in the arts at an all time high set against the backdrop of a negative macroeconomic environment and challenging art market.

I focused on three competitors in this space - ArtRabbit, Smartify, and SeeSaw. I found that with limited event information and personalisation on the app, users can quickly become overwhelmed by ‘infinite scroll’.

Personas

From this, I segmented users into 3 personas to delve deeper into their interests and motivations. All shared a similar pain point of being overwhelmed when looking for events, and needing more tailored information to suit their interests. By developing these, I had a better sense of who to recruit for my discovery interviews.

User interviews

I conducted 5 moderated, remote user interviews in an age range between 20 and 35 with individuals who fit the broad user personas I created. I asked questions about where people go to to find events, who they discover events from, and what challenges they experience in this process. Following user interviews, a pattern emerged that research and looking into events, and validating reviews - all take lots of time.

If there was a trusted and streamlined way to research events with minimal lifting, it would solve most of these user's pain points. Having a well-thought out app of information to include would help with pain points noted around art events including cost barriers, vague and unreliable information, lack of trusted reviews and personalisation.

Users wanted an app that felt like a personal guide, offering tailored recommendations and fostering connections with other art enthusiasts. With these themes in mind, I could turn these pain points into opportunities and start thinking about the user journey.

Ideate

With a better understanding of who my users were, and after grouping the interviews into three main themes, I was able to come up with following 'How Might We' statement:

  • How might we present more meaningful information about an art event to individuals actively searching for one to attend?

Doing so helped set the way I approached identifying essential features and creating user and task flows centered around personalization in the sign-up flow. I wanted to balance customization of a user profile with the most relevant questions with an easy onboarding process.

Wireframing + Prototyping

I first sketched out a couple of ideas on paper, then converted them straight into Figma. I kept the scope of the project small, focusing on a sign-in flow including a few personalisation questions, then leading to a home page tailored to their interests and types of art forms or artists they marked during the sign-up process.

I developed branding aimed at conveying sleekness and a clean, modern approach with a few bold brand colors. I loved the pop of the lime green against the dark blue, and thought they ultimately paired together nicely - especially with a font as bold and punchy as Milker.

Some changes I made from the mid-fi to hi-fi stage was adjusting button sizes, spacing, and layout of a few of the screens. The original version of this had way too much of the brand colors everywhere, this is the pared back version. If I were to do a V3, I’d explore using the brand colors solely in the buttons to make the feel less busy.

I then worked on a functioning prototype of the discovery and sign in high-fidelity wireframes, with the prototype file seen below of the two main flows.

Usability Testing

I first set success metrics, then conducted 5 unmoderated usability tests.

  • All users were able to successfully complete the sign up/personalization flow, and complete the discovery flow by getting a ticket to an event.

  • Confusion expressed during the test came from button colors, and some misunderstanding of the copy.

  • Some users were trying to explore more parts of the Art Map and another noted wanting to see an 'Add to Calendar' integration, but the features weren't in the parameters of this case study.

Based on the results, I prioritized changing button colors to be more visible in the ticket flow, and changed copy issues throughout. After incorporating all the changes, here is the finished product.

Retrospective

There's still a lot to explore with Verve, and I wish I had the opportunity to take this project forward, especially to build off the themes in user interviews around how to make the art event discovery process more social. For example, what if users were able to see friends' preferences and past events? Or of course a user should be able to upload reviews and photos of the event - but additionally - what if they could also upload any works of art they themselves might have created after attending an event because they were inspired? These are just a few of the number of other ideas that could be tested.

  • The importance of user and task flows, and information architecture in thinking through a clear user journey - this helped to be able to see the exit points for a user within the flow.

  • How to prioritize features - during the ideation phase, there were nearly 40 distinct ones on the list. Narrowing it down by putting the user first and prioritizing impact, effort, and establishing the absolute necessary features was a useful exercise in learning how to distinguish between what I wanted to do versus what the user would need to see first.

  • I have a tendency to sweat the small details and try to get things perfect during lower fidelity wireframes. I'd save time on my workflow on my next project by trusting the design process and recognizing that iteration comes as I go along.

  • I’d think a bit more about the Art Map, and how to make that an easy to use and useful feature on the app. To me, it feels easier to create a simple and clear map on the desktop, so if I had time on this case study I would have tried to build it out.