Connactz is an all-in-one solution for seamless networking and event management for musicians. It aims to help musicians and event organizers manage their calendars, coordinate the schedules of all band members, and create contracts and invoices more efficiently. Our needs analysis and the interviews with actors, technicians, and sound engineers, as well as discussions with the company experts from Bilderfest GmbH and Ape Connection, revealed an increased demand for specific aspects of our app: Calendar coordination, team management and communication between companies and artists. Therefore, we focus our efforts on the respective features within the application.
3 User Interview Conducted. Users' positions include actors, cameramen, and stuntmen from Bilderfest GmbH and Ape Connection.
We created the user journey map to uncover the various touchpoints users encounter and the emotions they feel while tackling their daily tasks. This map helps us identify where users might be facing challenges or frustrations throughout their day. By understanding these pain points, we can work on improving the overall user experience to make tasks smoother and more enjoyable for everyone.
The current user interface lacks a centralized feature that allows users to easily view the availability of team members, leading to difficulties in coordinating schedules and planning collaborative efforts effectively.
The existing user experience does not offer a centralized platform for users to manage and define roles for team members, causing confusion and inefficiencies in assigning tasks and responsibilities.
The current design of the personal profile page fails to effectively and professionally showcase a user's past works, potentially undermining the user's and limiting opportunities for collaboration.
Here is a sample of one of the requirements we came up with. It helps us figure out which page should have what information, making the user experience more organized and intuitive. This way, we can ensure that users can easily find the information they're looking for without any confusion.
First iteration:
Our initial thought was to provide options in 4 different weekly views using chip designs and to show both the team's available and unavailable time slots. However, the design with blocks for availability and unavailability ended up looking cluttered and overwhelming. It also gave users the impression that they could only book time in full blocks, limiting their flexibility to schedule longer or shorter periods outside of these predefined blocks.
We need to find a way to make the scheduling process feel more flexible and user-friendly without compromising clarity.
In one of our user tests, some participants suggested marking unavailability time blocks in red to indicate when team members are unavailable. While red does convey this message effectively, it creates a strong negative vibe that draws too much attention and disrupts the overall color balance on the page. We need to find a color solution that indicates unavailability without overwhelming the design or distracting users from other important information.
We experimented with a different approach by only showing green blocks to indicate when the entire team is available, leaving the other time slots to imply that someone on the team is unavailable. However, this led to some confusion among users, as they mistakenly thought that any time without a green block meant the team was available. It's crucial to find a clear and intuitive way to communicate both team availability and unavailability without causing misunderstandings.
The team management page plays a vital role for users, especially for project leaders who need to decide on specific roles for their projects. For instance, a project leader might need one cameraman but doesn't have a preference for who it is from the team. With our design, they can select multiple cameramen without making any of them mandatory for the project. This way, they can easily check the availability of any of these selected cameramen and book a suitable time slot, providing flexibility while organizing their team.
After trying various ways to display availability and unavailability, we settled on using grey color, slashes, and red indicators to show only the unavailability. This design made the whole view cleaner and clearer, making it easier for users to understand when team members are unavailable. With this clearer representation, users can easily book events or create projects that fit everyone's schedules without confusion.
We initially had a streamlined version of the personal profile, but based on user feedback, we added a new section called "Basic Information." Users emphasized the importance of being able to quickly identify specific characteristics, like finding an actor with blue eyes for a project. This addition helps project leaders easily spot and connect with individuals who match their specific requirements, making the collaboration process more efficient and targeted.
Results
Learnings
