Fieldguide
Fieldguide aims to help first-time planners connect with a planning expert, to guide them through the process of planning an event, without taking away their creative control.
Context
The Fieldguide project began after seeing friends and family struggle with planning events that were meant to celebrate major milestones in their lives. There are some self-guided resources in the market, but they are pretty generalized and it is hard to understand how to apply them to a personalized event.
There had to be a better way to help guide people through the event planning process so that they have the peace of mind they sorely needed without removing their sense of agency.
Objective
Design a mobile web experience that allows DIY planners to connect with planning professionals while they are on the go.
Discovery research
According to a 2023 study conducted by the Knot, 81% of couples plan their wedding, instead of outsourcing to a family member or professional. However, it is a complex endeavor that takes time and expertise to pull off. There are numerous books and online resources. Unfortunately, most of them are generic and do not prepare people adequately for the planning process.
I talked to users who have planned a wedding or similar complex event, to understand their goals and pain points. I also analyzed currently available solutions in the market, to see how well users’ pain points were being addressed.
Research goals
Understand why people choose to DIY event planning
Understand what parts of the planning process seem scary, confusing, or overwhelming for DIY planners before planning begins
Understand what parts of event planning are difficult for DIY planners during planning
Analyze what solutions currently exist in the market to help people plan their own event
Competitor analysis
Completing competitor analysis validated that most solutions in the market provided a similar feature set: generic planning & budget templates and project management tools. This left a lot of unaddressed needs for DIY planners including personalized guidance, “as you go” help from experienced professionals, and an efficient and trustworthy way to secure vendors.
User research study
I conducted eight 1:1 interviews with participants who had experience with DIY planning. The main questions I was trying to answer with this study were:
Why do people decide to DIY event planning instead of outsourcing the work?
What pieces of the process felt overwhelming or scary before they began to plan?
Once they had begun planning, what stumbling blocks arose along the way?
The study uncovered three major insights, explained below.
Key insights
Knowing what to expect upfront prevents mistakes
People feel overwhelmed initially because they don't understand the end-to-end planning process or how to get started.
People underestimate how much time and effort it takes to plan a medium-high complexity event (e.g. wedding).
Generic guidance isn’t helpful
The templates and checklists don’t help to answer specific real-world questions that come up a long the way.
It is helpful to talk to someone with experience when specific issues come up
Vendors can make or break the event
Acquiring trustworthy and competent vendors is time-consuming and stressful, yet critical to the success of the event.
Research Synthesis
Armed with the knowledge and insights I had gathered from all of my research, I distilled what I had learned into a user persona that I used as my North Star for the rest of the project.
User Persona
The key user persona for Fieldguide is Brenda. Brenda is a woman in her late 20s who is already juggling a lot of priorities in her life. She wants to plan an awesome event but needs assistance along the way that can meet her where she is - in the sense of her location, technical aptitude, and the capacity of her free time.
How Might We...
As I prepared to move into the ideation phase of the project, I created some open-ended questions to help get the gears turning.
How might we help people who are planning their own events to understand the event planning process up front?
How might we provide personalized planning help to people who are planning their own event?
How might we help people feel more confident that the vendors that they chose will be able to carry out their event successfully?
Defining Solutions
Ideation
I conducted multiple rounds of ideation to uncover the best ideas that could solve the user problems identified. From there, I developed prioritization criteria to narrow in on the target solution.
Affinitized Ideas
Prioritization criteria
How deeply does this idea solve the core customer problem?
Is this idea a unique market differentiator?
The prioritized idea
Key product features
I broke down the idea into smaller features and mapped the features back to the customer problems that I wanted to solve to ensure my solution was covering all of the core issues.
IA & Interaction Design
Information Architecture
Once I had a list of my prioritized features, I created the information architecture for the product, so that there was clarity on how all the features hung together. View full diagram here.
User Flows
I created end-to-end user flows to make sure that I was thinking through all of the interactions for the key features. The two critical user flows that I wanted to test were:
logging into the product
connecting with a planning expert in-product
Logging In
As a member, I want to login into my account, so that I can review documents that my planning expert has sent me.
Connecting with an expert
As a member, I want to connect with my planning expert, so that I can get event planning advice tailored to my event.
Sketches
Once I had worked through the flows, I started sketching out some of my ideas for the screen designs. I took the opportunity at this stage to gather informal feedback on my sketches and iterated on them several times before moving to digitizing them into wireframes.
Wireframes
I digitized my sketches into wireframes, which brought them to life, and allowed me to get more detailed feedback on the interaction design from participants.
Desktop Connected Meeting Flow
Desktop Member Dashboard
Desktop Connected Meeting
Desktop Multi-Tasking
Mobile Connected Meeting Flow
Mobile Member Dashboard
Mobile Connected Meeting
Mobile Multi-Tasking
Visual Design
Brand identity
Since Fieldguide was a net-new product, I had the opportunity to create the brand identity and visual design system. I started by creating the foundation for the brand, by defining what Fieldguide wanted to be to their customers.
Brand values
Through ideation and prioritization exercises, I narrowed down to the 6 key brand values. Now that I had defined the values, I could start iterating on the branding, ensuring that everything I created was in alignment with the chosen values.
Color Pallete
I wanted to create a color pallete that would emulate the values. It was important that it felt refreshing, while giving the user a sense of calmness. I also wanted to tie the brand name into the color pallete. Field guides give comfort and confidence to the reader, while they embark on their own adventure. I used green and blue tones as the branding colors to evoke the outdoors while still being able to convey the brand values.
Logo Evolution
I started sketching ideas for the logo, as I reflected on the brand values and the purpose of the product which is to guide a DIY planner through the journey of planning their event. I wanted the logo to embody the guided journey that the user would be embarking on. From my initial sketches I narrowed down to three concepts. Once I had picked a concept, I created the finalized logo around the concept.
Logo sketches
Logo concepts
Final logos
Style Tile
Now that I had the cornerstones of the brand design completed, I pulled everything together in a style tile, to make sure everything looked cohesive.
Visual product design & prototype
The visual design process uncovered visual treatments that needed adjusting throughout the flow. I found creating the prototype super useful because it helped me think through all the edge cases and make tweaks before testing with users.
Accessing notes from the member dashboard
Connecting to a video meeting with an expert in-product
Testing & Iterating
Usability Testing Goals
I had two main testing goals that I wanted to cover in the usability testing:
Test product concept with the target audience to validate that Fieldguide is solving the core event planning customer problems that were identified in the initial discovery research.
Reveal friction points or confusing experiences by measuring the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of the Fieldguide user experience.
View complete test plan here.
Results
I was really happy with the outcome of the usability testing. Overall, there was a lot of excitement for the Fieldguide user experience, and I was able to tease out areas where I could make improvements.
The good
100% completed the tasks and rated the tasks easy to complete
100% rated the overall usability as positive
80% would use Fieldguide to help plan their next event
Lots of excitement around the product concept and new feature ideas to make it better
“A service like this would be tremendously helpful, someone that knows vendors and the area, gives you a lot of comfort.”
The Opportunities
First Impressions: everyone understood that the Fieldguide was event planning related, but only a couple of participants understood the specific benefits of using the product, after briefly looking at the landing page.
Most didn’t expect the FAB to join the meeting.
All participants expected to navigate the site via the global menu icon.
Some participants wanted to see due dates and pending actions displayed more prominantly.
“I thought I’d have the option to call, email, or text the expert, but I didn’t think (clicking on the FAB) would join the meeting.”
Prioritized design changes
Based on the user feedback and testing results that I received, I prioritized several changes to the designs.
Global menu
Even though there was a sign in button on the landing page, participants wanted to be able to open the menu to sign in, so I built out this interaction to show what it would look like.
Dashboard quick actions
Participants wanted to see due dates and pending tasks more prominantly so they knew what they needed to do. Therefore, I updated the Quck Actions carousel with prominent links to these features.
Floating action button behavior
The behavior of the floating action button was unexpected for some users. I have added a menu that displays when a user taps the button, so that they can decide up front how they want to communicate with their expert.
Project Learnings
Criticality of doing deep customer research and analysis to ensure I was solving the most important customer problem.
Leveraging co-creation and feedback loops to quickly iterate and build on ideas and designs kept the solution space focused on the customer and sped up the process tremendously.
Staying in low fidelity until the ideas, flows, and interactions were solidified was super helpful in keeping the user experience front and center.
Validating ideas and designs with customers confirmed that we were solving the customer problem well, and helped flesh out where to go next with the product.