Wedding Venue App

Revenue for the Wedding Services industry declined 34.2% in 2020 as many weddings were postponed due to restrictions on large gatherings. While it is expected to bounce back in the next 5 years, many venues have still not caught up with modern technology, and have outdated sites with limited information. With 1 out of 4 weddings now planned as a destination wedding, there is also a client need to tour, book, and communicate virtually with venues.

As someone who is now beginning to plan a wedding themselves, I have struggled to find the information I need on venues without having to call them during business hours, which is when I'm busy working, or email and wait days to get the information. Weddings are expensive, and people want to make informed decisions when spending so much money on one day. I have created an app design for the "Wedding Venue" that serves as a possibility for venues ready to upgrade their user experience to provide clients and their families easily accessible information.

Scope

Project Duration

  • May 2021-August 2021

My Role

  • UX/UI Designer and Researcher from conception to delivery

  • Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.

Objectives

  • Create an app with a virtual tour experience

  • Have a way to book a date without calling or meeting with a venue representative

  • Show information on venue policies and rates

User Research

Competitive Audit

While I heard some general problems with wedding venue sites from my initial conversations with friends and family, I did not actually have a lot of experience looking at them until recently. I decided a competitive audit for venues in the Vitoria, BC area would be a good sampling to look at, as this is an area I considered for my upcoming wedding. I settled on a venue called Langtry Walk as my main example as I felt it was pretty standard in its offerings and pricing. From there I selected competitors of Langtry Walk that were around the same ballpark in terms of their offerings.

Wedding Venue App - Competitive audit template

After completing this audit, I complied a report to analyze my findings.

Wedding Venue App - Competitive Audit Report

Competitor Gaps

  • Competitors do not offer availability calendar

  • Competitors have limited pictures/videos of a wedding

  • Competitors do not provide layout of venue

  • Competitors don’t have much info on their site

Opportunities

  • Offer availability calendar

  • Offer VR/3D tour of venue as well as pdf layouts

  • Provide FAQ

Interviews

Next I setup remote interviews to see if user answers affirmed my competitive audit analysis, or if I had missed something that people really needed in a venue app. As I hadn't designed anything yet, I just had a few open-ended questions for my participants.

Interviews were conducted over video call or in person. My target audience had either had a wedding, was planning a wedding, or hoped to have a wedding soon. They were all between the ages of 21-65.

Question 1 - Explain what experience you have with booking venues for events, weddings, etc.

Question 2 - What features on a business’s website do you look for?

Question 3 - Describe the information/resources you would want to see on a wedding venue website/app.

Question 4 - What frustrations have you run into when looking at event/wedding venue websites?

Question 5 - Do you prefer to look up information about a business and their products/services yourself or talk to a staff member about it instead?

Wedding Venue Tour App Interviews and Empathy Maps

Empathy Maps

After completing the interviews I compiled their answers into empathy maps. These all formed the basis from which I created my personas. I have added a few examples below:

Customer Base

The target audience for weddings can vary in age, but I focused on 21-65 year olds and either have had a wedding, are planning a wedding, or want to have one in the future. I also included people who may be attendees to a wedding needing specific venue aspects such as my Niya Persona below.

Personas

Problem statement:

Michael is a LGBTQ+ project manager who needs a welcoming and organized wedding venue tour app because they are planning a wedding but don’t have time to waste physically going to a bunch of venues.

Problem statement:

Niya is a mother of three who needs her sister’s wedding venue to be accommodating toward kids because she is currently nursing her baby and wants to be included in the celebration.

Design

Information Architecture

Before I started a wireframe, I wanted to build the information architecture to make sure I didn't forget anything in the design. I wanted to keep the design as simple as possible with limited yet effective functions.


I also went through a user flow(below) for holding a wedding date function I wanted in the app. This would help me fill out the Availability tab pages.

Wireframes

I begin the design with some paper wireframes, and after deciding on a layout, created a digital wireframe in Figma.

Wireframes BlackWhite.pdf

Low-Fidelity Prototype

After a quick review of the IA in the wireframe I filled it out the connections in Figma to create a functional prototype.

Low-Fidelity User Testing

Before committing to this design and creating a high-fidelity prototype, I wanted to do some quick user testing. I knew my design needed some changes but I wanted to see what others thought the priority was before I started changing everything.


I interviewed 5 participants, all again in my demographic of 21-65. It was an unmoderated study conducted remotely within the US. My users consisted of two males, two females, and one non-binary person. I set forth a few navigation tasks for them to complete, and then asked for their general thoughts on layout and possible features. I had them voice record their process, and then compiled responses into the matrix below.

Wedding App Usability Research - Low-Fidelity

Affinity Map

I then analyzed their responses and used quotes from their interviews to create an affinity map. This showed me that I had several changes to make.

While there were a number of different suggestions from the testers, I focused on the top three that were most in common.

  1. Users needed a more intuitive way of exiting the Profile screen.

  2. Users wanted a contact form to be included in the contact section on the homepage.

  3. Navigation options needed to be expanded to include a Home button.

Redesign

Updates

First, I went ahead and restructured the app design to take care of the three design changes my users wanted from the user testing session.

For the Profile screen issue, I ended up making the screen full length, made the profile button a means of closing the profile, and added a back button so that everyone would be able to exit. I also centered the profile picture, added in basic contact info below, and left a space for other account details such as existing reservations, documents, and settings.

Next, I added a contact form to the bottom to the homepage. I wanted it to be as minimal as possible to keep the page relatively short, so I only included the most necessary information.

Finally, I changed the navigation panel to include a home button. I also split the pricing and policies pages in an effort to have less scrolling on each page. This would also likely be less frustrating for users if they are only trying to reference pricing and not policies or visa versa.

Color

With my high-fidelity prototype, I took color inspiration from some of the images I would be using and settled on a vibrant pink and navy palette. While I didn't use green in my app design, I wanted it to be a binding element in the photographs I chose to keep things cohesive. I thought this was a fun color palette that I didn't see other venues using. I originally wanted to use much lighter colors but due to accessibility standards, I needed to go with more contrasting colors.

I was trying to stay away from the popular color palettes that I was seeing everywhere on Pinterest, i.e. the 70's revival designs with terracotta, orange, and beige or the ultra modern black, white, and gray palettes.

High-Fidelity Prototype

User Testing

Interviews

It was now time to bring my high-fidelity prototype to user testers. I felt really confident in my design and was ready to hear affirmation and praise. I tested the same group that I had for the low-fidelity prototype and expected them to really enjoy the changes I had made based on their previous feedback.

It was again an unmoderated study conducted remotely within the US. I set forth the same navigation tasks for them to complete, and then asked for their general thoughts on layout, colors, features. I had them voice record their process, and then compiled responses into the matrix below.

Wedding App Usability Research - Note taking spreadsheet 2

Affinity Map

I then analyzed their responses and used quotes from their interviews to create an affinity map. I was surprised by some of their feedback, but also found it super helpful.

While there were a number of different suggestions from the testers, I focused mostly on the visual design and communication feedback.

  1. Most users hate the pink.

  2. The design has too much text.

  3. It's not modern, it needs rounded corners.

Final Redesign

Updates

Most of the users hated the pink color I had chosen for accents. Luckily I had another color that I was already including in the photos that could replace the pink. I swapped the pink for green which changed it from high-contrast energy to analogous and calming.


With the pink swapped out, I also rearranged some of the colorings and changed the background pure white to a soft gray to dull the contrast.

The next comment I had from users was that there was too much text on the app making it look more like a website. I limited the text I had on all the pages, but I focused mostly on the policies page. I felt now that the word policies was too harsh and the page itself had no real information and was meant to link to a PDF that the venue would make like I had seen on other wedding venue sites. So, I swapped Policies for Details and instead listed out all the venue information with icons.

Finally, I just had the minor change of rounding all the corners for my buttons. I had decided not to do this in my initial design because I thought it was too common place and potentially looked too whimsical. After the feedback though, I realized that rounded corners are ubiquitous on apps for a reason, and are part of what makes an app look like an app and not a website.

Final High-Fidelity Prototype

Final Thoughts

Having worked as an event coordinator and designing my employer's own venue website, I felt pretty confident about this project. Once I received my rounds of feedback though, I realized that app design is possibly even harder than web design. Apps have much less space, meaning everything you put in there needs to have a purpose and visual appeal. It also needs to be fun to use and not over crowded. A website offers much more space to play with, so you don't have to worry as much about editing the design down.

I also learned through this design that my work doesn't have to be different from all the other apps out there. In fact, an app works better when it adopts the common icon, rounded corner, and other visual aspects that other apps use. It creates a visual continuity for users and make navigation much easier. This process was a huge learning curve for me, but makes me excited to start the process again with a new project after having this experience to reflect on in future work.