Helping Sofar Concert Website Improve Their Search Experience

The Problem

Sofar Sounds is a business dedicated to curating intimate concerts in unique spaces. New users didn't spend much time on it due to the difficulty of the search experience with a single dropdown menu. This case study will be targeting new users of Sofar Sounds who are searching for gigs nearby.

Helping Sofar Concert Website Improve Their Search Experience

The Problem

Sofar Sounds is a business dedicated to curating intimate concerts in unique spaces. Users can search and purchase for tickets. Searching for available intimate concerts is very limited with a single dropdown menu. This case study will be targeting new users of Sofar Sounds who are searching for gigs nearby.

Role

User Research

Product Strategy

UI Design

Interaction Design

Usability Testing

Tools

Figjam

Notion

Maze

Figma

Otter

Timeline

5 weeks

Team

Myself

Designer

Usability Review

We ran a usability review to understand what works and the pain points of accessing the website.

Competitor Benchmarking

We conducted both direct and indirect competitor benchmarking using the Usability metrics (Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors, and Satisfaction) to understand where our product stands.

We found out that the search bar can be prominent with various dropdown options and wanted to put that in our design.

Research Interviews

We conducted research interviews with users who attend concerts to understand their motivation and how they are currently navigating purchasing tickets.

Affinity Mapping

We gathered insights from the interviews and categorised them into common themes.

Insights

After we created affinity map of groupings, we segregated primary insight and secondary insight from our research to see how we take design forward

Ideation

Through crazy 8's, my teammate and I explored how many ideas can be used to improve the search experience.

User Flows

We conducted user flows to better understand how a user accomplishes a task.

Style Guide

A guide was created for styles and components to maintain consistency throughout.

Components

These components are used in the search bar to create consistency throughout the design

Design Solution

More dropdown options

We have various options such as location, dates and genre to help the users filter the concerts

High Fidelity Prototype

View the Sofar Sounds website: Sofar Sounds

This prototype helps to solve search experience:

Users will be able to select their location, dates, genre and get their search results
Users are given the freedom to select location and dates based on certain options that can give them the desired results

This prototype helps to solve search experience:

Users will be able to select their location, dates, genre and get their search results
Users are given the freedom to select location and dates based on certain options that can give them the desired results

This prototype helps to solve search experience:

Users will be able to select their location, dates, genre and get their search results
Users are given the freedom to select location and dates based on certain options that can give them the desired results

Usability Testing

Next, we conducted unmoderated usability testing with the users on the search experience of Sofar Sounds.

Test Outcomes

The results were positive where users were able to complete the tasks on achieving search experience. Some feedback we received were to include an option for Search by artist which is something that my teammate and I will use in our next version.

Next Steps

We would explore secondary insight and include the option for search by artist