Project

Spark Design
Festival Research

Workers from all parts of the client company, the world, and every discipline came together for three days of sharing experiences and making connections with each other. Most of the crowd were designers who came to get inspired, meet coworkers and learn thing or two. The event was held in a few hubs pots around the globe and steamed live for virtual attendees.The research team’s main goal was to get an understanding of the needs, pain points and wishes of past and present volunteers, speakers and attendees.

Client

Global tech company

Role

User Researcher

Time

4 Months

Team

Armon, Jason, Ariel, Jenn

Background

Designers are constantly creating amazing work for clients and internal projects that often go unsee by their peers. The Spark Design Festival is one of the avenues that allows for designers to showcase their work, learnings and teachings. But the festival also allows for connection and networking in a time when it was much harder to connect.

The Spark Design Festival is one of the avenues that allows for designers to showcase their work, learnings and teachings.

- Spark Festival Attendee

Challenge

Conduct research to get an understanding of the needs, and sentiments of past and present volunteers, speakers and attendees.

The challenge is that we want to collect data on the attendees and speakers of the design festival, but that’s a potential of 10,000+ participants to get data from. And we are only a team of 10 researchers, with other commitments on our plates. However there is a huge amount of research experience on the team with which to utilize.

Solution

With an enormous amount of potential research candidates the research team had to be strategic with our efforts and so we utilized a research plan to gather data.

The spark festival consisted of 3 distinct phases, pre-festival, during the festival and post-festival. We took advantage of this to break up the user research to fall within these 3 phases. Within each phase we would conduct research methods to collect quantitative and qualitative data. This strategy allowed us to gather the most data simultaneously and asynchronously as a team.

Research Method

User Interview

Before the festival the team conducted 1:1 user interviews with attendees, and speakers to learn about their thoughts and expectations for the upcoming Spark Design Festival.

We conducted 1 on 1 user interviews that were semi-structured with a scripts so that we could ensure some consistency but allow for the flexibility to go where the conversation took the interview. The participants varied but we managed to conduct 13 interviews before the festival at around ~30 mins each. The interviews were conducted virtually to allows the widest array of potential participants.

High Level Findings & Insights

After interviewing, all interview transcripts and interview notes were analyzed for reoccurring comments, sentiments and needs. Overarching macro and micro themes were discovered, and would later be reported along with standout quotes from participants. This data could then be utilized to set expectations for the upcoming festival.

I’m not really sure what there is to learn but I think that’s exciting too because there's going to be a lot out there to explore and discover.

- Expecting Spark Design Festival Attendee

Research Method

Website usability studies

Before the festival the team conducted 1:1 website usability testing with attendees, and speakers to uncover usability flaws and strengths of the proposed website for the Spark Design Festival.

We conducted 1 on 1 moderated usability studies that walked participants through a few pages of the proposed festival website. We did so virtually using Invision’s prototyping features, coupled with Zoom’s screen share. The participants varied but we managed to conduct 6 interviews before the festival at around ~30- 45 mins each. The data from the studies would be analyzed and reported to the festival design team to implement where necessary.

Recommendations Handoff

After usability studies were concluded, the team took the research findings and grouped them into themes and categories that we could ideate on to find solutions. Then the UX Design team would take those recommendations and begin implementing them into the website.

Research Method

User Interview

After the festival the team conducted 1:1 user interviews with attendees, and speakers to learn about their experience during Spark Design Festival.

We took the same approach as before the festival analyzing notes, and transcripts for themes. The huge amount of data made it necessary to separate our findings into speaker and attendee insights. These insights would be reported to the festival team to iterate on and make the festival better.

High Level Findings & Insights

In the same way we worked pre-festival, after interviews were done all interview transcripts and notes were analyzed for reoccurring comments, sentiments and needs. This go around we decided to separate the attendee and speaker insights since we had more participants with so much more to tell us. But we managed to get overarching themes by narrow down overlapping sentiments.

The 3 days of the festival were pretty stacked on my calendar, it’s a little bit hard moving things around.

3 out of 11 participants shared a
similar sentiment.

I think it was pretty straightforward. I really like the way they charted out where you could submit.

5 out of 7 participants shared a
similar sentiment.

Conclusion

After the festival all research findings and insights were packaged into on document to be shared to the festival organizing team leaders.

The final deliverable was a research insights and findings document that would contain the research from each study done by the research team. We worked as a team to get a great deal done in a very short amount of time, I think the research plan played a huge part in that. And because of our efforts future Spark Design Festivals will be better experiences.

Spark Design Festival Research

Spark Design
Festival Research