Background
Visa, through its sponsorship, creates one of a kind experiences and conference events for clients visiting during premium live sporting events that span (sometimes) weeks, happening all over the world.

Their current events app is widely used by attendees in person and remotely to plan, schedule and view events as well as network with other invited executive guests.

I was asked to evaluate the design, offer a solution of what I would do next to iterate the experience, and hand over the final high fidelity mockup. This solo project took 72 hours to complete.

Evaluation
I did a quick heuristic audit of the current state of the Visa Events App. I annotated 10 problem points that could be addressed, everything from usability, accessibility and mobile app best practices.

Comparative Analysis
I needed to understand the 'events' space a little more. Searching for event apps online gave me some examples of what some of the best apps are doing and what features users expect to use when they download and use a sponsors events app. All successful apps combined a calendar, social features, activity feed and messaging well.

Context
I considered under what circumstances apps like these used: It must be mobile, Used in busy environments, Connects users easily.

Users
Who were the users who used these types of apps? Exhibitors, Clients, VIPs, Sponsors, Event Attendees.

Use Cases
What are the most common use cases that users expect to encounter and turn to the app to help solve?

Synthesis
‍After collecting notes on the industry and users I began to see a pattern of user expectations and events app best practices:
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● A users primary reason for downloading an events app is to see all events, secondary is to have a map of the venue and plan their visit.
● Dynamic images and ease of adding events to a reminder or calendar is important.
● The interface must feel somewhat familiar and not introduce too many unique interactions, user will want to be able to quickly pick up how to use the application and will abandon the app if the learning curve is too steep.

How might we...
Attendees want a simple scannable event app, to achieve the goal of getting the full live sporting event experience and minimize their frustration feeling overwhelmed and disorganized in a busy and unfamiliar environment. The current inability to do this causes invited executive guests to miss out on must-see events and create important networking connections. How might we re-design our Visa Events app so attendees can get the most out of their time, stay informed on live and trending events and allow them to customize their events that align with their business goals?

Persona
With this data in hand, it was time to create a proto-persona that I could design my solution around. Lauren is a first time invited executive guest, visiting Major League Baseball's All Star Game. She will be required to visit certain exhibitions and create new network connections at a few events where her company has sponsored panels on diversity and sports. How can I design a solution so she can come back to her company and summarize her connections and knowledge gained representing her company at one of Americas biggest community and sporting events of the year?

Sketching
‍I completed a few quick sketches based on Material Design guidelines. This platform allows for the easiest cross platform consistency between devices and with keylines, margins and standardized surfaces, convey a modern style that users can easily recognize.

Wireframe & Flow
‍The task that Lauren will need to do is to: Quickly identify the events she needs to attend and easily add that event to her calendar so she won't miss it. Using a scannable card layout, she can easily see the name of the event, day, time and, with the image, get a feel of the type of event it will be. Once she taps on the event she can see more details of where and when to go as well as who is presenting the talk. With one tap of the Floating Action Button she can quickly and easily add the event to her schedule.

My solution used Material Design Guidelines. I wanted to bring the experience up to date without losing the intent of the original app, this solution can also be mirrored and re-skinned to be used by Visa for other live sporting events throughout the world.

The Homescreen:
● The look and feel was updated to fit inline with Visa's current style guide and feel consistent within their brand color and typography.
● Using an extended App bar on the top with the most common used menu navigation.
● The whole experience is Visa branded and the Avatar is used to get to settings and menu.
● The hero section displays Live and Featured events in a gallery carousel.
● The events body has two tabs that allow attendees to filter events by 'trending' or 'all events'.

The Event Screen:
● Users can share the event via social share.
● Hero image clearly conveys the environment attendees can expect to experience.
● Users can see how busy it will be, day, time, location and details.
● Presenters can be accessed and connected to by taping their avatars.
● Lauren can easily and quickly add the event to her schedule with the FAB (Floating Action Button).

Outcome
Overall, I feel this solution was largely successful, I would have liked to have done final testing on the high fidelity solution and hear back on next steps for other live events that have been difficult for Visa to use a 'one size fits all' events app like this on.