Reducing
attendee confusion
in virtual events
Resolving product confusion issues for first time attendees.
Airmeet
My role
UX research | UX design | Prototyping | User testing
Project duration
10 weeks (Aug to Oct 2022)
Overview
Virtual events are a relatively new phenomenon and Airmeet is a young platform. Most attendees at Airmeet are either first time or infrequent users. Attendees feel that the platform is difficult to navigate, confusing and overall experience is complicated. It supported by specific KPIs related to attendee experience issues -
#10
Rank 10 at G2
among other events platforms.
Low score wrt ‘ease of use'
200
Attendee complaints
received in 2 months
related to product complexity
Initial problem statement
Joining an event is expected to be a simple and straight-forward process. Rather, the platform is creating anxiety and confusion in the minds of the attendees. The challenge is to simplify the event attending process for the first time attendees
Secondary research
-
Approximately 54% of registered participants convert to actual attendees.
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Only 7% of people want to attend virtual events that are longer than an hour.
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Bad connection is a reason for annoyance for nearly 40% of virtual event attendees followed by bad audio (30%), bad camera (20%) & messy backgrounds (12%).
Conclusion -​
-
Tech team was reached out for confirming if there could be any of these issue leading to attendee confusion.
Primary research
Research goals
-
To know the mental model of first time attendees & understand their expectations.
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To understand the pain points of the first time attendees.
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To find out navigation issues and complexities on the product for an attendee.
Interviews were finally concluded in coordination with Neha Kapadne, UX researcher, Airmeet.
User interview observations : Problem areas
Reception page
Schedule modal
Alerts & notifications
'Event feed' modal vs 'Session chat' modal
'People' modal vs 'Direct message' modal
'Event feed' modal vs 'Direct message' modal
Internal product data
-
On Airmeet, only 47.5% of attendees click on the ‘view schedule’ CTA to view the sessions list.
-
On Airmeet, 70% of registrants are joining the event but only 55% of attendees are joining atleast one session.
-
On Airmeet, 98% of attendee complaints received were from events with standard reception.
User persona
Wayne Roony
Software engineer, Google
36 M | Tech Savvy
Wayne is a mid-senior level tech professional with 10 years of experience. He is an educated professional who is overloaded with work. He also has a family to focus on. So, his main focus is on efficient time management.
Types of events he is interested in are internal meetings, all hands, AMAs, conferences, webinars, lectures, trainings etc.
Pain points -​
-
Complexity in figuring out how to join he desired session.
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Confusion in selecting the desired sessions.
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Networking and interacting with co-attendees should be a simple straight-forward process.
Needs -​
-
Content consumption, learning & growing is most important.
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Subject of the event and speaker panel is also important for him to decide if he register for the event.
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Connecting with like-minded folks and professionals, speakers and organizers is next in priority.
Priorities -
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Generally do not have enough time to go through the whole platform to understand the nuances.
-
Quick navigation to session experience.
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Direct landing into the session in which they are interested.
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If there is time, agenda or speaker list should be helpful in shortlisting of suitable sessions.
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Quick 1:1 interaction with co-attendees, speakers, booth exhibitors and hosts.
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Ease of posting questions and confirmation for response/follow-up.
User journey map
Takeaways
Must be achieved
-
Most important objective of a reception is to lead attendees to where they want to be.
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The primary agenda of attendees is content consumption (ie attending sessions).
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Time taken by attendees to reach to their desired session should be minimum.
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Reception should also act as a space for discovery of major features of the event like networking, booth exhibitions etc.
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Lounge & booth should be highlighted.
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Schedule should be easily discoverable.
Good to achieve
-
Speakers & tracks become a major factors on the basis of which attendees can decide which session to attend and which one to skip.
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Name of the event and organizer’s name becomes another thing of prime importance which needs to be highlighted.
Need more research
-
Event feed & alerts are solving the same problem. Then, why does event feed look like a chat?
-
Why are there so many types of notification modals appearing for the attendees?
Redefining scope
For the first phase of this project, we will concentrate on the the issues related to standard reception only.
Final problem statement
There are multiple issues with regards to the standard reception that induces anxiety for the first time attendees and creates confusion. Major problems are as following -
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Difficulty of navigating into live sessions
-
Lack of means for attendees to select a session
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Lack of visibility of Schedule
-
Lack of understanding of Lounge & Booths
-
Clutter on top navigation
The intent is to reduce the product complexity issues thereby enhancing the first time attendee’s experience.
Goals
-
Simplified navigation to reach the desired session
-
Ease of selecting a session
-
Reduced learning curve
Success metrics
-
Increase in session joining rate
-
Increase in click rate for View Schedule
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Increase in % of attendees visiting schedule
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Decrease in time spent to figure out navigation
Initial ideas
Final designs
Visual design was finally concluded in coordination with Alisha Gupta, visual designer, Airmeet.
Reception page (Desktop web >1024)
Reception page (Desktop web <1024 | Mobile app | iPad app)
User testing
The prototype was tested with a total of 12 attendees. 5 of them were internal Airmeet employees (new joinees, not acquainted with the product).
Feedbacks
-
The sponsor cards look a bit dull wrt visual design.
-
There are 3 CTAs or entry points for View Schedule. Is it an over-kill?
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Default banner image needs more deliberation and should be reflective of events.
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Discoverability of event level features go down in case of engage menu.
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Widgets for Lounge and Booth are still missed or over-looked by users.
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Widget for Speaker and Tracks are extremely useful for leading attendees to the sessions of their respective interests.
Way forward
-
Sponsor cards to be retained as is. Intent is to keep them neutral.
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'Schedule' CTA to be removed from the Live/upcoming sessions scroll.
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New banner image options to be provided.
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Widget for Lounge and Booth to be part of V2 launch. Separate testing needed.
Post launch validation
15%
hike in customers preferring to use standard reception for their events as compared to custom reception.
26%
36% decrease in avg. time taken by attendees to join first session as soon as they enter Airmeet.
38%
increase in click rate for ‘Schedule’.
9% increase in session joining via ‘Schedule’