FilmSpace

unique venue booking app

Unlock Limitless Creativity

Film space is the ultimate platform for filmmakers, photographers, event planners, and anyone seeking to book extraordinary locations for their next event. Seamlessly connecting visionaries with unique venues, Film space empowers users to bring their creative projects to life like never before.


‍

Roles

This is a student project for CareerFoundry where I assumed the following roles:

  • User Experience (UX) Designer
  • User Interface (UI) Designer

Deliverables

UX/UI Design :
‍

  • Competitive Analysis
  • User interviews
  • Minimum viable product (MVP)
  • User Flows
  • Rapid Prototyping & Usability Testing
  • Mood board
  • Style Guides
  • Low-, Mid-, High-fidelity wireframes

Project Specifications

Duration: 3 weeks

Tools:

  • Figma
  • Marvel app (prototyping)

Understanding User Needs.

Problem Diagnosis

Discovering and booking unique venues for creative projects has always been a time-consuming and complex process. From making phone calls, to coordinating with different venues, this process can be cumbersome. In addition to this, the process can drive away young creatives from booking locations because of their lack of access. Discovering hidden gems and lesser-known venues can be challenging especially if you are visiting a new area. FilmSpace addresses these pain points and empowers creatives, event planners, and professionals to focus on their creative vision, providing them with an efficient solution to discover and book venues.

Proposed Solutions

Streamline the booking process for unique venues by offering a centralized platform where users can easily explore a diverse range of locations, saving valuable time and effort.
Integrate direct communication tools within the app to facilitate efficient collaboration between users and venue owners.
Ensure a secure and reliable booking experience by incorporating robust payment systems and safeguarding transactions, instilling trust and confidence for the user.

"Significant time and effort is required for filmmakers, photographers, event planners, and professionals to Find and Book unique venues."

Research

My initial stage of research focused on the competition space to see how other booking apps solved similar issues. Customer feedback and reviews were analyzed to help me gain insights into user satisfaction, pain points, and areas for improvement. To gain further insights, one-on-one interviews were conducted with local creatives (musicians, film makers, photographers) to help me gain a deeper understanding of my audience.

Findings
A successful booking app begins with a strong selection of venues. Existing booking apps with a limited selection perform poorly because it makes it more challenging to find the right location.
Customers expressed a desire for specific types of venues, such as unique filming locations, specialized event spaces, or unconventional meeting venues.
Locally, creatives have frustrations towards not having a budget to rent spaces. Having a clear filtering system can help narrow options based on budget.

Building Empathy

Based on my findings, I was able to create user personas to bring clarity to my audience. Understanding my audience on a deeper level allowed me to create a product that resonates with their desires and addresses their pain points. Ultimately putting our audience first.

Aiden

Bio

Aiden is a passionate student with a love for photography. He is new to the area but his unwavering love for photography motivates him to capture captivating images in unique locations. As a photography hobbyist, he embraces the challenge of discovering the area around him to expand his artistic vision.

Preferences

He seeks a platform that offers a diverse range of photography locations, including urban landscapes, scenic views, abandoned buildings, and natural settings. Aiden values user-generated content, such as reviews and photos, to get a visual sense of the location.

Goals

Explore and discover his new city for photography locations & Connect with other photographers in the community.

Pain Points

Limited Knowledge of the Area Small budget to rent spaces. Aiden may feel the need for guidance and security when booking a location.

Quote

"As a college student in a new city, photography allows me to connect with my surroundings on a deeper level. It's through the lens that I uncover hidden gems, appreciate the beauty in the ordinary, and document my personal journey."

Layla

Bio

Layla lives in Los Angeles and recently started and event planning business. She is a wife with 2 kids and often gets caught up with work. Layla is very creative when it comes to party planning so she wants the perfect location for her vision.

Preferences

Layla values time-saving solutions to simplify the management process so she could spend more time with her kids. She appreciates features that enable easy communication with venue owners. She seeks a platform that offers a wide range of business-friendly venues, such as conference spaces and meeting rooms.

Goals

She seeks to minimize stress and workload by tools that can streamline her process. Strives to manage her time effectively ensuring that all tasks including venue booking and coordination are handled.

Pain Points

Often finds herself overwhelmed Finding suitable businesses can be time-consuming

Quote

"Behind every successful event is meticulous planning, attention to detail, and a passion for creating unforgettable experiences."

Alex

Bio

Alex is a passionate content creator based in San Francisco. His love for visual aesthetics and storytelling drives his pursuit of creating high-quality content. He is constantly seeking unique locations for his creative vision. Alex aspires to inspire, entertain, and connect with his audience.

Preferences

Values authenticity and strives to deliver content that fits his creative vision. Appreciates inspiration from curated location suggestions

Goals

Build and online presence Collaborating and networking

Pain Points

Finding unique locations can be challenging. Content creations requires constant inspiration and innovation.

Quote

"Every frame is an opportunity to tell a story, to evoke emotions, and to make a lasting impact on those who engage with my content."

The Foundation of FilmSpace

This site map was created to outline the organization and navigation of FilmSpace. It depicts the overall structure of the app and allowed me to highlight key streams that the high-fidelity mockups will focus on:

1. Search
2. Booking

As the app expands on features, this site map will help ensure the overall structure remains coherent and user-friendly.

Early Designs

Utilizing the crazy 8s method to create rapid sketches, helped me get my ideas and concepts on paper. This allowed me to explore and experiment with different layouts and navigation, leaving room for iteration and refinement.

Evaluating Usability

Low-fidelity prototype testing allowed me to get feedback early in the design process to ensure that the final product meets user needs and expectation. During testing, I was able to observe how my participants interacted with my app and this helped me identify any usability challenges, navigation issues, or conceptual problems.

Findings

By listening to my participants go through the tasks verbally, I was able to detect any issues based on their confusion or comments. Participants also expressed their desires for additional features which I was able to take into consideration.

Usability Issues: Participants expressed that the initial search process was too long and could be condensed to one screen.
Confusing Layout: Some believed the filtering options were a bit confusing.
Positive Notes: Some expressed that the flow was similar to other booking apps so the process felt familiar.

Establishing Visual Design


To begin my visual design process, I created mood boards and style guides to achieve a cohesive and impactful brand identity, The mood boards serve as visual inspiration to capture mood, aesthetic, and language of the brand.

Style Guide

The style guide takes inspiration from the mood board and translates it into specific guidelines.

Optimizing User Experience

A responsive design was developed for FilmSpace to increase accessibility for users. Many users will rely on their mobile devices for work, research, and communication and others like working on their desktop. Ultimately, designing responsive designs for FilmSapce aligns with the app's goal of simplifying the booking process and catering to the needs of a diverse audience.

Final Mockups

Moving Forward

There is still much more to explore with FilmSpace. Some Potential features I would like to explore are:

Booking Management: Developing a comprehensive booking management system that allows users to manage and track their bookings.
Social Sharing Integration: Integrating social features to allow users to share their venues, projects, or experiences to promote a sense of community
Special Offers and Promotions: Partnering with venues to offer exclusive discounts to incentivize users to book through FilmSpace.

Retrospective

What Went Well


Working on FilmSpace was an insightful journey as this was my first full-length UX case study. Through this project, I learned the power of staying responsive to user feedback and continuously iterating.

I'm happy with my overall design and I'm proud of this project being my first full-length UX/UI project. Going into this case, I wanted to design a tool that solves a problem I am familiar with. I chose to design FilmSpace because I am familiar with the pain points of the film making audience. I was able to communicate my problem statement and with the help of my user testers, I was able to come up with a proposed design solution.

Challenges

Initially, I went into this project with a mobile-first approach, and I felt it was difficult to make my designs responsive to web and tablet screens. I think practicing designing different responsive apps would help me overcome this, as well as doing more research on current popular responsive web apps.

Future Considerations

Moving forward, I want to continue using this method of design process which is getting early feedback to gather information early to identify any usability issues and make more informed decisions based on my target audience.

Next case study

Mr. Fungi