Designing an immersive conference experience
Brief
Hosting conferences and events come with their share of complexities and problems. Managing a conference can be hassle when the organiser has to take care of myriad of moving parts. We designed a platform that removes the barrier of physical events by providing an immersive conference atmosphere.
Conference by Verizon is a video conferencing platform where participants from across the globe attend multi day conferences virtually. Our objective was to design a convenient and user friendly platform which could host multiple events and provide users one place to access all the details they need.
User Research
Product Strategy
Innovation Consulting
Enterprise UX
Cloud Video Conferencing
Research & Discovery
First things first, is to know what our end users want and scope out what other competitors are providing. We started by going through the customer stories followed by researching the market for detailed insights.
We thoroughly researched the Virtual Events market to understand user requirements, trends and design patterns etc.
We found that virtual events market is projected to have a steady increase of 18% through 2030 and to be valued around 1066$ Billion.
We examined some of the competitors in the market. We looked at user flows, features and content to know where we can add value.
We went to our end users to find out their pain points and requirements, we collated the insights which we used in our initial explorations.
Some of the customers are RedHat, IBM, Standard Chartered.
Ideation & Strategy
We put on our thinking hats and started creating user personas and mapping out user flows before getting started with exploration.
We targeted these 4 personas for conference to build our hypothesis
Organiser, Speaker, Moderator, Attendee.
Learning about their painpoints gave us deeper insights for how to proceed with our solution.
Mapping out the user’s task flows helped us visualise the problem at hand better and create solutions that are the most efficient for the all the personas.
During exploration, we didn’t limit ourselves creatively while keeping the user’s needs in mind.
Repeated testing of every idea helped us create solution that brings ease of use and efficiency for the users.
Keeping every user in mind
During our research phase we found out that different personas have their own activities and actions they perform during the course of the conference. We mapped out the user behavior for all the personas Pre, During and Post Conference.
Building a cohesive virtual event experience for attendees
In our research, we found that participants had to follow multiple links for the events they were invited to. This caused problems in previous products, making it hard for participants to keep track of all the events easily.
With the help of customer stories and market research, we decided that this issue can be solved by creating a website for the conference. This website serves as a hub for all the events and details making it easier for participants to keep track of the conference.
Building an immersive center stage for key events
The Stage is the focal point for all important events. Our design creates an environment that captures the excitement and immersion of a physical stage experience.
We meticulously crafted the stage to enable participants to fully immerse themselves in the ongoing event, whether it's an opening speech or the launch of a new product. The design fosters an atmosphere where attendees can concentrate fully on the event at hand.
Giving a bird’s eye view with parallel session
We made it easier for participants to get a bird’s eye view of all the upcoming and ongoing events making it easier for them to jump from one event to another with parallel events.
A holistic view of the event
We designed dedicated pages for the events giving all the details for the event, it consists of all the information you might need for your events including event brief, real-time engagement, smart suggestions for other events and more.
Highlighting the stars of the show
Speakers are the stars of the show, we wanted to bring them into the limelight by highlighting them throughout the conference. This was achieved by a dedicated speakers page, speaker mentions in the event pages and speaker highlights on the event cards
Featured Speakers are highlighted on the homepage. Users can click on them to checkout the profiles and the events they are hosting.
This section promotes the headliners of the conference.
Speaker profiles have speaker information, social handles and events they’re going to host.
Speakers avatars highlighted on Event cards fo all the events giving attendees a peak into who is presenting at the event.
Telling a story through transitions
From bringing up the stage to jumping into events, every transition is designed to tell a story and pull the attendees into the experience. We incorporated visual cues such as dimming the lights and smooth transitions for joining the event.
Designed to be accessible for all
We kept accessibility and usability at the center while designing a fully customisable website. We looked at color contrasts, keyboard navigation and screen reading capabilities to make it accessible for all users.
With millions of color combinations for the website there can arise contrast issues.
We made sure that all the states and text are legible. We made sure that the website passes contrast guidelines.
We made sure that users are able to navigate through the website even without a mouse. We added keyboard shortcuts and navigation for more control.
We wanted everyone to be be able to use the website. Adding screen reader support helps people with vision impairment access and enjoy the conference experience.
We created a website which is accessible across devices and responsive across different screen sizes making a conference accessible for a large number of devices.
Participants can now watch their favourite events from any screen.
Conference Organiser: Hosting and management made easier
Zero to Hero in under 5 minutes: Intuitive 3 step setup for organisers
Through our research, we discovered that a majority of competitors offer complex and tedious scheduling and setup processes. This often proves challenging for organizers to manage effectively.
We created an easier and simpler approach for scheduling and managing conferences. With 3 simple steps the conference can be up and running in under 5 minutes. Organisers just have to add events, customise the attendee website and publish!
Designing for customisation: How we balanced aesthetics and granular control
Our new and innovative approach simplifies the process, requiring just a single colour to personalise the entire website. Event organisers can effortlessly showcase their brand identity through themes, logos, promotional banners, and background visuals.
Organizers can create an amazing, distinct look and feel for every conference by implementing a few key changes . These can help make each event unique and memorable, catering specifically to the theme, audience, and goals of that particular conference.
Simplified management
A conference needs tools to manage it and keep it running. We designed a whole suite of features such as Unified user management, Quick event scheduling and analytics that help the organiser make sure the conference keeps running smoothly.
Adding value after the conference ends with recordings & resources
After the conference ends, we wanted to motivate participants to come back and watch their favourite events or the events they missed. With Recordings and Resources we allowed organisers to add value to the conference by adding additional resources and recordings.
Building an adaptive design system
We wanted to provide an easily customisable and robust experience for organisers to build their conference website. To achieve this we decided to create a design system that can bring out the branding with minimal inputs from the organiser. With just one colour, the design system can derive accents, hover states, pressed states etc. The components adopt the colours intelligently to bring out the branding.
Along with this we made the components to be responsive and accessible whether the organiser chooses light mode or dark mode for the website.
