PACHANKA
ROLE
UX Research & UX Design
DESCRIPTION
Pachanka can help customers determine future expectations regarding changing COVID policies and plan things accordingly. The application can provide recommendations based on data points and let users decide what is best and the condition of the event.
Pachanka is about the better experience of attending social events in the context of the pandemic. We are going through a hard time, but we still need social interaction as well as to stay safe.
Instructor
Peter Skillman, Jason Levine
Tools
Miro, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Procreate
Duration
6 weeks （2022 Jan - 2022 Feb)
Pachanka
[noun]
Pronounced PatCH-an-ka, means street party, or unmediated reunion of people to have fun on the street.
JBTD Statement
Today people trying to engage in social events have to balance too many competing sources of information about COVID-19, especially when they are trying to determine if it is safe or not to hold or attend an event.
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There is a great deal of data and information about COVID risks out there. What’s missing is a trusted way to synthesize the data and output a measure of risk. Pachanka help users determine future expectations regarding changing COVID policies and plan things accordingly. It will provide gathering recommendations based on data points and help users to decide what is the best.
Design Question
How can we make our assessments credible and reliable to users?
How do we prevent users from ignoring the risk when we have provided a relatively optimistic assessment or feeling overly stressed and anxious because of our risk warning?
Research
To understand the user needs, we conducted semi-structured interviews with social event organizers and participants around us. During the interview the participants expressed that to feel safe and secure during COVID times while attending or hosting a safe event, people may consider:
Participants’ Health and Vacine Condition
the Number of Participants
Venue’s ventilazation
condition
Local tendency
Persona
The MLP of Pachanka will include event organizer and the participant.
User Journey
We figured out 2 user flow to understand the stages, steps, and pain points for event organizers and event attendees.
Organizer Side:
Participant Side:
Combining user profiles, we conceived two user usage scenarios for both organizers and participants, analyzed their behavior, and figured out possible opportunities for improvement.
Lo-Fi Paper Prototype
Given our research findings, I came up with the Lo-Fi paper prototype that tackles the problems in our scope. I listed 7 key pages for each side and formed the red route.
Organizer Side:
Participant Side:
Wireframes
We created wireframes to develop an understanding of the features and the structure of the experience.
User Feedback and Evaluation
We conducted user interviews with six participants whom we asked to perform two tasks:
(1) setting up an event through the organizer flow
(2) responding to an event invitation.
Participants are asked to think aloud and describe their thought processes while performing the tasks.
Highlights from the results:
1 - The concept is confusing
“Illustration is confusion on the homepage, what does this image mean?”
“Why is it called a calculator?”
“The concept is confusing, I need help.”
Added onboarding screens
2 - The forecast data is too general
“How does getting this report, like six weeks before the event mean anything to me?”
“I don’t know what to do with 2% thing…where did that come from? What does it mean?”
​“Forecast seems static and inaccurate”
Iterated risk forecast page
Before
Before
Mid
After
3 - Confusion about what to do with forecast information
“How does getting this report, like six weeks before the event mean anything to me?”
“I want to cancel my event, I want to change the venue... what measures can improve the risk forecast?”
“What if I decided to cancel my event at the end, how do I do that?”
“What if there is a high risk, will your app suggest a solution?”
Added event cancellation Feature
Before
Before
Before
After
Added Suggestions Screen
4 - Plus-ones can't be added
“If my husband and I are both invited, can one of us attend and one of us not attend.”
“If I bring a guest or a group of friends with me, can I re-do the form for them? Is it different if they live in my household or not?”
“What if I want to get a friend with me?”
Added Plus-one Feature
5 - Too Much to Read
“If there is too much to go through or commit to at the beginning itself, I might abandon the app and not use it... [It should be] ‘click, click, click’...”
​“OMG there is so much to read, this is so overwhelming”
​Reduce content and UX writing iteration
Before
Before
Before
After
6 - Too Much to Do
“I can be asked if I am vaccinated and if I select ‘yes,’ I can be told to carry and show it at the entry. What if I finally end up coming? Then unnecessarily the app has my info, I don’t want that”
Redesign the Vaccine Requirement
Before
Before
Before
After
Prioritization
We finished this round of UX research with a long to-do list and very limited time left in the project. We used a prioritization exercise in Miro to determine our next move.
We ultimately got to all our mission-critical items and our nice-to-have items, but organizing our work in this way kept us focused on a tight timeline.
Brand and Design System
Mint green is considered the color of nature, and it brings out emotional harmony, stability, and endurance. It is associated with refreshment and peace, helping people feel rested and secure. Because of its calming vibes and resonation with staying healthy and connected during the pandemic, the color mint green is used as the main color in PACHANKA.
Voice & Tone
Voice & Tone
Reflections
Scope and Potential opportunities
What I learned from this project is that there is no one-size-fits-all persona. When creating user prototypes, the first step is to define their purpose and the scope of the product. Initially, we came up with four personas that included participants and organizers of everything from small gatherings to large events. Then we realized that we needed to determine the tradeoffs of choosing a narrow or broad scope for our personas.
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Since this was an academic project, we ended up narrowing our personas to two: small event participants and organizers. With a narrower scope and less context to consider, we could have deeper data to support our personas and discover more about the motivations, goals, attitudes, and behaviors of our users. This helps us make specific design decisions.
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The current product is a B2C product that helps users address their personal needs when deciding to attend/participate in a small event. But there is still a potential opportunity to cater to larger events by making a B2B version for business scenarios. It could be a web version or a desktop application that uses dashboards and data visualization to help present risk assessments.