EVENT FINDER
Where Orthodox Jews can find entertainment options while staying true to their moral and religious values
Case Study
Project
Constraints
Time:
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4wks to get as much work done as possible with the goal of completing wireframes. Another team would pick up the project where we left off.
Dispersed Team:
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Designers and clients collaborated across 3 different time zones.
Users:
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Our design team was heavily reliant on our clients to supply qualified users for primary research.
Design Practices
& My Role
Where I Led The Team:
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Project scope & timeline
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Research plan
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Stakeholder interviews
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User interviews/synthesis
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Competitive anal.(co-led)
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Site map
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User flow (co-led)
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User stories
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Mobile strategy
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Client communication
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Project summary/next steps
Where Else I Contributed:
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Secondary research
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User survey
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Persona development
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HMW strategy
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Prototyping (sketches and wireframes)
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Guerilla usability testing
The Team
& Tools
Team:
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4 UX/UI designers (including me)
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1 product stakeholder
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Head of the Innovation Lab
Tools:
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Figma
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Figjam
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Miro
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Google Drive
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Google Chrome
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Zoom
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Slack
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Email
Collaboration
Methods
Design Collaboration:
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Each design practice began with one or two designers leading the strategy/work creation, followed by team discussion/improvements.
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Collaboration software allowed us to brainstorm and design together in real time despite our distance.
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Some design tasks (ie: sketching and prototyping) were divided equally.
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Individual sketches were redrawn by one designer, unifying the look for client presentation.
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Each designer contributed to every aspect of the design process.
CASE STUDY
OVERVIEW
American Dream is an organization with a large entertainment, retail, and dining complex minutes from New York City.
American Dream's Innovation Lab is exploring the development of a ticketing platform designed specifically for the Orthodox Jewish community in the NY Metropolitan Area. They see a business opportunity given the large numbers of Orthodox Jews (nearly 800K and growing) and the challenges these users face while searching for tickets on traditional ticketing platforms.
The struggles and needs of this user group vary widely but generally stem from the desire to protect their moral values and religious commitments. For instance, some users believe the simple act of browsing the internet might inadvertently expose them to objectionable content that could compromise their moral and emotional well-being, so they put filters on their technology that only permit access to select “Kosher” websites. Others want to protect their children from content they deem inappropriate. And still others, simply want tools that provide information on the availability of Kosher food at events, or that prevented them from accidentally booking events that conflict with their Jewish holidays.
THE CHALLENGE
Design a platform with a clean and simple ticketing interface
that Orthodox Jews can trust to browse, explore events, and buy tickets
in a way that protects their religious beliefs and moral integrity.
PROJECT SCOPE & TIMELINE
STARTING WITH A PLAN
I led the team by creating a project scope and timeline we all agreed on and getting buy-in from our clients. This ensured that everyone would be working with the same set of expectations. Our clients' ultimate goal was a fully developed ticketing platform where users can both create events and buy tickets, but our design team only had 4 weeks to take the project as far as possible. Given this time constraint, we agreed to begin working on the ticket purchasing side of the platform. At the end of the 4 weeks, the goal was to deliver wireframes of the main pages users would encounter for event exploration and ticket purchase, plus a summary document with "next steps" to pass along to the team picking up where we left off.
THE APPROACH
DESIGN THINKING
Design Thinking was the approach we used, a human-centered, hands-on, iterative design method that keeps the user at the center of the process, with usability testing at each iteration of product development, to ensure the intended solutions are actually meeting the user’s needs. This process is illustrated in The New Double Diamond Model of Design Thinking by Jasper Liu:
RESEARCH
Our primary research goal was to develop empathy with the user in an effort to address their needs. To that end, we used specific design practices to better understand the space, the need, and the users:
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Stakeholder Interviews
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Competitive Analysis
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Secondary Research
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Individual User Interviews
STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
CLARIFYING OBJECTIVES
I interviewed our stakeholders which enabled us to gain their perspectives on the users, the problem, and the business opportunity at hand. The conversation not only allowed for the transfer of knowledge but also gave us a better understanding of the context and history leading to the project and ensured we were all working toward the same set of user and business goals. These were the main takeaways:
Users
Orthodox Jews are very family oriented and frequently look for events they can enjoy together. They have large families so travel tends to be cost-prohibitive. Instead, they seek entertainment through local events. Given the patriarchal environment, the men do most of the ticket buying. Women and children have more limited access to the internet but influence the men in their buying decisions.
Business Opportunity
There is a large and rapidly growing population of Orthodox Jews in the NY Metro area. This ticketing platform would be a place for Orthodox Jews to purchase tickets to events created by other Orthodox Jews. Nothing like this exists yet. Adoption (or rejection) of products in this community occurs very rapidly through community word of mouth. Once vetted by the community, everyone uses the product.
Problem
The process of finding local Orthodox-friendly events is fragmented and difficult, involving printed ads, in various publications or dispersed Jewish websites. Web surfing in general is considered risky behavior by the Orthodox community, potentially exposing users to objectionable content, a risk some are not willing to take. Many ticketing sites are also uncomfortably cluttered with ads, and cumbersome to use.
Motivation
This platform would be seen as a convenient one stop shop, where users can both create community events as well as find events, and buy tickets. The usual fragmented process would be aggregated and simplified. The uncluttered and easy-to-use interface would also allow users to filter content to suit their interests and their specific religious needs, thereby protecting them from morally damaging exposure.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
COMPARING OTHER PLATFORMS
We looked at more than 18 ticketing platforms trying to find, from a visual and heuristics standpoint, the most user-friendly. We chose the 5 best platform examples and presented the pros/cons of each to our client. The most inspiring site was Tock for its simple navigation, engaging photography, clever use of icons, clear content, consistent components, and bright CTA buttons.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
A QUICK EDUCATION
Tapping into existing research, allowed us to gain a quick, general understanding of Orthodox Jews. It also inspired more detailed questions to be asked during our primary research about their less conventional technology habits.
Demographics
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They are young, median age 35
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Marry young, typically by age 25
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Have large families, avg. 4.1 kids
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Are well-educated, 47% have some college,17% have post-grad degrees
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Above-average incomes, 42% earn $100K+
Engagement with Tech
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Orthodox beliefs restrict access to the internet over concerns about moral and psychological well-being.
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Users frequently install "kosher filters" on phones and computers to block specific websites or entire categories of content.
Community
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Approx. 760,000 Orthodox Jews in the US (adults+children)
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Represent 10% of the US Jewish pop.
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79% live in the Northeast (NY & NJ)
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Tend to be conservative in their politics in contrast to all other Jewish sects who a highly liberal.
COVID Impact
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Forced to stay at home, their internet usage increased by 40% as they went online to shop, study, and video chat.
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They recognize technology is pertinent to growth, despite their spiritual concerns about internet use.
Importance of Religion
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83% say religion central to their lives
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95% keep Kosher
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Orthodox Jews more observant of Jewish rituals than non-Orthodox
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Remain insulated in their community, 84% say most or all of their friends are Jewish
Changing Habits
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It is expected that even after the end of the COVID crisis, internet and tech tools will continue to be used, and this will impact their way of life, expand their connection to the general population, and contribute to economic development.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
INDIVIDUAL USER INTERVIEWS
We conducted a qualitative research study, interviewing five potential users. The goal was to learn more about the Orthodox Jewish community, firsthand, and to understand, given the tech-restrictive nature of the community, how users interact with tech, find entertainment events, and purchase tickets online. We sought to understand their needs and pain points related to this subject.
INTERVIEWEES
Qualifying Criteria
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Adult members of the Orthodox Jewish community
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Have an interest in purchasing tickets to entertainment-oriented events
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Use the internet to make purchases
GUIDING QUESTIONS
Interviews were guided by pre-planned questions, but users often revealed unexpected information that we encouraged them to expand upon. This was particularly helpful as we were all somewhat unfamiliar with the nuances of Jewish Orthodox life. It also greatly helped to inform the design of the product, ensuring features were best suited to the specific needs of this niche community.
SYNTHESIS
By combining the collected research data, a clearer image of the user and their needs was revealed and served as a basis for defining the problems that needed to be addressed in the product's design. These design practices were used for research synthesis:
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Affinity Mapping
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Persona Development
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"HMW..." Questions
AFFINITY MAPPING
EMERGING THEMES
Affinity Mapping was used to aggregate the data collected from our individual user interviews. The themes that emerged revealed common desires, habits, interests, pain points, and motivations within this user group.
One of the most important revelations that emerged was that these users were actually much more active online than we had expected to find, especially with social media. Not only did most of the users have access to laptops, they all relied heavily on their mobile phones for their online interactions.
Users made clear that any platform without a mobile component would likely fail, users explicitly stated they would not use it.
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
WHO ARE THE USERS
Synthesizing the user data, brought together our guiding persona, Ruth. She represents a summary of the insights gained from all of the research, with a clear backstory, goals, motivations, and frustrations. Picturing her allowed us to empathize with her situation, and stay focused on her issues as we designed solutions.
RUTH'S STORY
Ruth is part of a tightly-knit Modern Orthodox community in NY. Her religion and the laws that govern her faith are important to her. She and her husband make sure they are raising their children accordingly. They enjoy attending fun entertainment events with their kids and often learn about events on social media from the venues and event promoters they follow. She loves the convenience of directly linking to their sites to buy tickets, but she's a busy person and has no patience for complicated websites. She is loyal to the sites that are reliable and that provide good and quick customer service. As a mom of 3 teenage boys Ruth wants to allow her children to search for fun events by themselves, but feels some of the content they encounter is inappropriate, so she wants a way to limit the content her kids see on the ticketing sites. She also wants an easy way to see if the events coordinate with the Orthodox calendar, if Kosher food will be available and other details specific to the laws of Orthodox Judaism.
PERSONA REVELATIONS
OTHER USERS
A critically important and unexpected revelation that emerged during our interviews was that Orthodox Jews are further divided into branches whose attitudes, habits, and needs differ significantly:
MODERN ORTHODOX
Are known to practice their religious beliefs while also embracing many aspects of modern secular life, including wearing contemporary clothing and using modern technology fairly liberally. Most have access to laptops and rely especially heavily on their mobile phones for browsing the internet and engaging with social media. Social media is also often where they hear about upcoming events and link directly to tickets.
HEREDI (or ULTRA) ORTHODOX
Are much more stringent in their adherence to Jewish Law. They dress more "modestly" and are more likely to use content-limiting filters on their browsers to prevent exposure to objectionable content over concerns for their moral and emotional well-being. Men will not watch a woman perform at all (again modesty concerns) and insist on the separation of genders and seating during events.
We had inadvertently only captured users from one side of the Orthodox spectrum, the "Modern" Orthodox. More research would be necessary to fully understand the needs of the"Ultra" Orthodox
HOW TO PROCEED
While we learned a lot about Utra-Orthodox habits and needs from our Modern Orthodox interviewees, the information was still second-hand. Without the perspective of the Ultra-Orthodox, we were simply hypothesizing about their needs. However, conducting more interviews now would affect the timing and deliverables in our compressed time frame. We offered these options to our clients:
OPTION 1
Research the needs of the Ultra-Orthodox community before beginning designs. Spending the extra time now would likely result in a more effective product for users and save time and money on redesigns further down the line.
OPTION 2
Move forward with designs by incorporating the second-hand information we collected about the Ultra-Orthodox, but ensure that designs are thoroughly tested with users from both sides of the spectrum.
Client's Choice
HMW QUESTIONS
REDEFINING THE PROBLEM
Using the insights we discovered during our research we redefined the problems to be solved. Framing them as HMW questions helped to set the stage for ideation and finding solutions.
IDEATION
Divergent thinking was our goal during ideation with the aim of generating as many ideas as possible. Using the practices listed below, the best ideas then converged into the solution and a product that seemed best suited to these specific users as well as to the goals of the business.
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User Stories
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Site Map
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User Flow
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Rough Sketches
USER STORIES
FEATURE PRIORITIES
Through User Stories, we made a list of features with descriptions of how they would help solve our users' problems. Then we prioritized them for the purpose of creating a Minimal Viable Product (MVP). Included in the MVP were the features we knew would be critically important to both "Modern" Orthodox and "Ultra" Orthodox users, such as prices that clearly showed the fees, and entertainment categories specifically for men only, women only, or families, that protected users by bypassing objectionable content.
Search Box
Helping the user quickly narrow the scope of their search by date and location.
Photo Blocks
Representing individual events that include the date and location of the event, for quick and easy identification.
Entertainment Categories
Allowing the user to instantly filter event offerings by one of those categories and bypass potentially objectionable content. (Must include “Events for women only”, “Events for Men only”, “Family Events”)
Filtering Tags
Allowing the user to further narrow their search for an event, based on specific criteria like price, popularity, or the availability of kosher food.
Jewish Calendar
That details the Jewish holidays to help prevent booking conflicts.
Prices that Reflect the Fees
Providing price transparency to avoid a nasty surprise near the end of the purchase.
Prominent CTA Buttons
Helping the user find them easily and quickly identify what they need to do next.
SITE MAP
ENVISIONING THE SITE
I created a site map to help us visualize the architecture of the ticket-purchasing side of the platform. After deciding on the main categories, I added subcategories, necessary pages, and a structure for how each of the groups would connect. My teammates added elements to represent the connection to the ‘event creation’ portion of the site, which would be fleshed out in a future project.
USER FLOW
THE PATH TO PURCHASE
With the site map in mind, I reworked the user flow my teammate created. It details the route the user will take, from the time they enter the website, right through to the completed ticket purchase. It also reflects the information they will be asked to enter, and the decision points they will be facing along the way.
ROUGH SKETCHES
BRAINSTORMING
Having decided on the features to be included and the users' path to purchase, we divided up the pages to be designed and each of us sketched ideas for a particular section of the user's journey. We used our earlier assessment of the best competitive products as inspiration for our designs. We then came together as a team on FigJam, suggested additions and deletions to the sketches, and decided on the most user-friendly solutions.
TEAM COLLABORATION (FigJam)
PROTOTYPE
Now we were ready to design the product. As this was our final week, we moved quickly to complete these deliverables:
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Lo-Fi Prototype
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Usability Testing
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Wireframes
LO-FI PROTOTYPE
SKETCHES
We chose one person to re-draw our final design ideas for a unified-looking presentation to our client. Up to this point, our client wanted us to focus only on web pages. During our presentation, we again stressed the importance of creating a mobile channel for this user group.
GUERILLA TESTING
USER FEEDBACK
Before moving to Wireframes, we planned to do Guerilla Usability testing. Due to the extra days that we were set back looking for interview candidates and our client's desire to have wireframes in hand by the end of our project timeframe, we moved directly into wireframing. Skipping this important testing step was not optimal so I made a quick attempt at some guerilla testing. It was not as thorough a test as I would have liked, but it did reveal that the designs were fairly intuitive and that the ticket quantity option on the date selection page was confusing and should be moved. The ticket quantity option was moved to the next page, following the user's choice of date/time/venue. This change should help reduce users' cognitive load by decreasing the number of choices to be made on each page. It will also allow the user to clearly see the correlation between the number of tickets and the total price.
LOCATION OF TICKET QTY. CHOICE
Before Testing
After Testing
WIREFRAMES
RED ROUTE DETAILS
We ultimately designed both web and mobile wireframes of the main search and purchase screens, delivering seamless consistency between the two platforms. The Red Route of each channel below indicates the user's path from the home page through to the ticket purchase page. The wireframe delivery concluded our involvement in the project and we transferred the assets with suggestions for next steps.
WEB RED ROUTE
MOBILE RED ROUTE
NEXT STEPS
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
Keeping users at the center of the design process is key to building a product that will be relevant to them and to the business success of this project. With that in mind, these are my recommendations:
Addressing the research gaps
To truly incorporate the vastly different needs and interests of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, I highly recommend another round of primary research focusing on Ultra-Orthodox users, with a mix of men and women.
Design updates incorporating the needs of Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Create and incorporate personas representing the Ultra-Orthodox user group, adjust the HMW questions, and reevaluate the current designs based on the combined needs of the different user groups (personas).
Usability Testing
Before proceeding to high-fidelity designs, I highly recommend user testing of the current designs. Usability testing is central to user-centered designs, revealing the successes and failures of existing design concepts and serving as the basis for the next iteration of designs.
PROJECT RECAP
WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED
Specifically targeted at the Orthodox Jewish Community in the Tristate area (NY, NJ, CT), the goal of this project was to design a clean and simple ticketing user interface that allows a less technically savvy and adaptive user to...
1) browse/explore events, and 2) buy tickets to chosen events.
These designs are primarily geared toward the “Modern" Orthodox Jewish community. Our research revealed significant insights and interests related to these Modern Orthodox users. However, primary research also revealed that Orthodox Jews are further divided into subcategories with significantly different needs. As it turned out, none of our interviewees were part of the more traditional "Ultra" Orthodox subcategory. Thus, the information we gleaned about Ultra-Orthodox users is largely second-hand and not represented to our satisfaction. Further primary research as well as usability testing is required to satisfy a truly user-centric design suited to the entire spectrum of the Orthodox community.
Current designs employ a “mobile first” approach and ensure continuity between the mobile and web experiences. The mobile-first approach is particularly key to this audience since research revealed that this community primarily uses their mobile phones for internet activity. A web design that is not mobile responsive could be seriously detrimental to the overall success of this project.
Other important user needs we addressed in these designs include a simple navigation process that is uncluttered and designed with consistent and predictable components from page to page, filtering categories and tags that shorten the search process and help bypass potentially offensive content, a calendar detailing Jewish Holidays preventing buying mistakes, price transparency detailing fees in advance of checkout, and prominent CTA buttons.
Due to timing constraints, these preliminary designs include the main pages of the ticketing interface but stop before the checkout process.
Thank you for your interest!
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