Gamification of Music Festivals
NXNE is a popular music festival based in Toronto, Canada, known for finding the fresh and upcoming Canadian talent. Our project goal was to create a gamified experience for mobile applications for festival go'ers to use as a guide navigating around the festival and vendors. By designing an immersive interface, this allows NXNE to generate foot traffic for vendors, as well as incorporating the festival's theme and branding when visitors walk around the venues.
UX/UI Designer and Researcher
Visual Design, Wireframing and Prototyping, Interface Design, Video Editor, Pitch, Creating Style Guide and Branding
Figma, Blender, Canva, Trello
UX Design
North by North East (NXNE)
November-December 2023 (7 Weeks)
Challenge
Our objective was to create an immersive app with a gaming component, to increase foot traffic to the vendors at the festival without causing either party to spend money or resources.
How Might We… design a solution that will increase foot traffic and keep users engaged at the festival?
Results
As a team, we decided to adopt the strategy of a scavenger hunt as our gamification aspect. Users are given riddles that are connected with in-game quests that leads them to certain vendors around the venue. Once at the proper vendor, they will be able to scan a QR code and get snippets of a song. Once all quests are completed, they are able to piece all the lyrics together to download the song to keep.
Ready to Game?
View the pitch video below or click the button to view the prototype for yourself!
Day 1 to Final
Before we get started, I created a project timeline that me and my team followed on a weekly basis during this project. Below is the timeline illustrated of the different stages from discovery, define, iterate to launch.
Who's doing it better?
NXNE isn't the first music festival that is trying to create an immersive experience for their visitors, and it is surely not the first one trying to make a gamified app. So we decided to look at the competition, and we selected (2) festival's apps: Coachella and Gov Ball.
When looking at competitors, we kept an eye out for these features: Line Up, Schedule, Map and Discovery.
Coachella
They adopt a more traditional approach by using a tab system but there is no designated home page
App seems a bit outdated
Line up doesn't allow you to view schedule or locate where the artists are performing in the area
Lack of global search and no map of the event
Gov Ball
Every CTA (Call to Action) is given on the homepage
Separate tabs for different sections
Overview is good, minimal aesthetic
No global search either
Map is a static image and not interactive.
Meet Maya… First Time Attendee!
We created different type of proto personas to reflect the different type of users that might visit the festival. Introducing Maya (24F), a first-time attendee. Her goal is to come to the festival, make some friends and see some of her favourite artist's performances.
We kept users like Maya in mind, when designing the different screens and elements of our gamified app.
Taking AR experiences to the next level
Ideation always start somewhere. Originally the client had compared their vision to Pokémon Go, an AR experience, with map components and gamified elements. As a team, we started to brainstorm ideas that would take the gamification elements but also answer our How Might We questions.
Things we kept in mind:
We needed an interactive GPS like element for navigation
Other features and elements that were included such as an expandable mini-map, directions indicators (arrows), and mini quests to complete for prizes.
Iteration came in several stages between collecting feedback from instructors and stakeholders from sprint meetings and email conversations.
In another alternate universe…
Even though we were given the branding kit, I wanted to create our own style when creating this gamified app experience. As a team, we brainstormed some concepts and descriptors that would fit with NXNE's branding colours and typography.
Seeing as we were designing for a music festival, we wanted the app to match a certain style and vibe. The descriptors we selected were: Neon/Vaporwave, Multidimensional, Retro Video Games, Cyberpunk, Arcade, Spider Verse and Nightlife.
From paper to digital gaming
From variations of sketching and endless rounds of prototyping, we included the following pages for our app: Passport Page, QR code scanner, expandable mini map, and AR navigation for the main screen.
Passport page: This stores the user's profile, the rewards, all of the in-progress and completed quests.
To view the rewards, users would have to solve the riddles to get a hint of which vendor or store to visit.
Once in the store, they can scan a QR code to collect a song bit. Once they collect all the lyrics and complete their quests, they can download the full song to keep.
We also implemented AR elements in our navigation to allow the user walk around the map. Our main character is NXNE's mascot bunny, which mimics the current direction the user is going. There is a miniature map which is expandable, and directional elements using arrows to help users navigate around the venue.
We used static images, models and videos to place into the prototype to demonstrate the flow of the app. This app includes side menus and a navigation bar, a home page which displays which artists are performing, and the festival's socials so users can reach out and stay connected.
When we transitioned from low-fidelity to the final high-fidelity prototypes, we rendered the video of the mascot walking. We created minimal animations and interactions to flesh out the prototype, transferring written content and implementing the brand style guidelines.
Next level unlocked…
Every project has some challenges and one of ours was designing our solution in a way that wouldn't use money based incentives. This meant: no discounts, coupons, special deals — that would be at the expense of the artists or vendors.
Our scavenger hunt concept was the ideal approach. And it took a while to maneuver around our research, game design and AR technology to make our idea come to life.
One feature I'd love to implement is customizing the main character, changing the background music based on the user's location on the venue, or changing some colors. I'd also love to explore more on how to create accessible design in the gaming space, or ways to create widgets that connect to smart watches.
Overall, this was a great experience to learn how to create a gamification of an app, work with other types of designers and creatives, and learn how to make a design immersive and animated.