How we delivered a new experience to encourage the audience to explore and discover what the DCA has to offer.
role
Research, UX Audit, Competitor analysis, information architecture and exploration (wireframing)
DCA is a cultural hub offering a diverse range of creative experiences across visual art, craft, film, and more through various formats like events, workshops, classes, and activities for all ages. I embarked on this comprehensive redesign project with exciting opportunities to enhance content discoverability and user engagement, while creating pathways for visitors to explore the art center's full breadth of offerings.
This case study walks through our process of revamping the website and its impact on facilitating better user interaction, exploration and overall engagement with DCA's content and offerings.
Keep reading for an in-depth look at the project approach, challenges, solutions and key takeaways.
We looked at the existing data, which showed the DCA website received about 30% of traffic from the homepage, but only 1% of those visits converted to a purchase checkout. For confidentiality reasons, I've omitted the actual values for metrics throughout this case study. This sizeable drop-off flagged a major disconnect in the user flow from homepage to ticket purchase.
Based on this data insight, we identified opportunities to optimize the searching, browsing and content experience in order to better engage users and increase conversion towards purchased tickets.
Booking flow
In this section, I'll walk through some of the key processes, insights and key findings from this project.
After the initial discovery phase with the stakeholders, we continued gathering additional information to support our strategic framework. This involved mapping insights from workshops and conducting desk research to understand the audience groups, their motivations, behaviors, and the jobs to be done.
Additionally, I analyzed competitors' navigation, content, features, and functionalities.
Key findings included:
Film is the most significant art form at DCA
Need for better visibility and clarity around film releases, programming, and related content/materials.
The importance of connecting exhibitions with other listed activities
Awareness of workshop and events and offerings for different age groups.
and more...
The next step was to synthesise all the findings and share with our team and stakeholders, and prioritize opportunities to explore optimal experience improvements for new and existing users.
The designer from our team and I kicked off by collaboratively developing initial concepts based on the proposed site architecture, structure, content and functionalities. These early ideation sessions were crucial for aligning our creative team on how the designs would solve key user and business needs we had identified.
Every week, we facilitated creative working sessions to develop and critique divergent ideas before converging on the most promising solutions to prototype and user test.
This iterative process allowed us to ideate fluidly while getting regular feedback from each other and stakeholders. The frequent solution critiques helped us avoid working in silos and established clear design principles to unify our direction.
After sections of refining & explorations, we presented the latest prototypes to stakeholders and gathered feedback to refine the concepts further. With their input, we evolved the prototypes and prepared them for user testing to validate our approaches solved for the core needs.
To validate our approach of prioritizing content for easier event/activity discovery, we conducted user testing with 6 participants across key sections like the homepage, detail pages, search/filters, and booking flows.
Initially testing the homepage and detail pages allowed us to gauge how well the designs catered to the common user intent of simply finding a film to watch. We then tested the search, filtering, and booking process to ensure users could seamlessly select dates/times for their chosen film.
After each round of tests, we synthesized all the feedback - separating what was working well from areas that needed improvement. Overall, participants felt the site navigation was clean, intuitive, and provided all relevant access points for their needs.
As expected, there were also areas of frustration that emerged from negative user feedback. We used these insights to iterate and tweak the designs accordingly. A major piece of feedback was to improve the visibility and discoverability of certain filters and film detail elements.
By rapidly alternating between user testing, analysis and design tweaks, we were able to continuously refine and validate our approach to deliver an optimal experience.
Team collaboration early - Design partner pairing allowed us to thoroughly explore concepts and uncover additional opportunities. This tight collaboration streamlined our workflow from sketching to high-fidelity concepts while still creating wireframes for key pages/features to align with devs before implementation.
Consistent creative reviewal - We held regular design critiques and creative meetings throughout the project lifecycle. This brought all stakeholders together to secure across the board alignment on progress and gather wide ranging insights for potential improvements. These check-ins proved critical for maintaining forward momentum and incorporating valuable team perspectives.
The value of user testing - User testing insights were extremely valuable, so we dedicated enough time to analyze results through a critical lens. While some initially proposed solutions didn't quiet delivered what we were aiming to achieve, these "not quite yet experiments" provided crucial context about user needs and behavior. This deeper understanding empowered us to take a more strategic approach to design tweaks and refinements for successful validation in the final round of testing.
