PartyBOSS

Case Study: End-to-End Mobile Web Design 2024

PartyBOSS is an all-in-one platform designed for the small and personal event planner, enabling users to plan, search and execute every aspect of an event from start to finish.

With PartyBOSS, users can:

  • Create Budgets

  • Track Expenses

  • Share Calendars

  • Design and Send Invitations

  • Market their Event

  • Search Vendors

  • Communicate with Team Members

  • Recruit Volunteers

  • Post Reviews

  • Gather Feedback from Attendees

Party like a BOSS. Plan like a Pro.

Overwhelming. Chaotic! Intimidating...

Overwhelming. Chaotic! Intimidating...

The Problem

Small and personal event planners often identify the event planning process as chaotic and overwhelming.

While there are plenty of full-service event planning sites for the professional and corporate event planner (at a price), there are none that cater to smaller planners in the same capacity. SignUp Genius offers scheduling and volunteer collaboration. Evite specializes in invitations, and multiple other sites boast venue searches, but none of them offered all of these services in one place.

No wonder the event planning process is stressful!

Research

  • Competitive Analysis

  • User Interviews

  • Personas

  • Affinity Mapping

  • POVs/HMWs

Design

  • User/Task Flows

  • Card Sorting

  • Results/Similarity Matrix

  • Sitemap

  • Style Guide

  • UI Component Library

  • Low/Mid/High-Fidelity Wireframes

Delivery

  • Prototypes

  • Usability Testing

  • Iterations

  • Feedback Grid

  • Final Product

Affinity Map, Page 1 of 3

The Research

Competitive Analysis: I compared services between four potential competitors and analysized their target market, pricing structure, and basic strengths and weaknesses. I also compared features including applications, social media and blogs, planning tools and feedback inputs.

User Interviews: I conducted user interviews via video chat with a group of small event planners. My users were overwhelmingly female, and between the ages of 25-58. They ranged from young professionals to stay-at-home parents to corporate managers.

Personas: I developed several personas of my users including demographic information, pain points, expectations, priorities and motivations in order to create a “snapshot” of a typical user.

Affinity Mapping: Participants’ responses were separated into twelve catagories ranging from emotional responses to sites and tools used to goals, pain points and feedback.

POVs/HMWs: POVs and HMWs were developed from user feedback, with the top two concerns being implemented into the user/task flows in the design phase.

Persona

Insights

All of my users relied heavily on email to communicate with team members and guests, but none of them used planning websites for their events (though they did make use of sites including Evite and SignUpGenius for invitations and volunteer coordination).

And though they shared a variety of differing priorities, several common pain points emerged, including managing team members and volunteers and communicating with guests. Overall, people management was identified as a top concern, followed by budget limitations and lack of resources.

Despite budget concerns, all of them expressed interest in an all-in-one planning platform - even for a price!

The Goal

So how to get everyone on the same page? My goal for PartyBOSS was to combine the services of existing party planning sites to an all-in-one platform. Not only would this streamline the event planning process but within this capacity, event planners, team members and guests could collaborate in a dedicated space through email, group chat and text.

In addition to these cross-collaboration tools, I wanted to keep the costs down as budget limitations were also cited as a common pain point. An ad-sponsored site would allow users to take advantage of free services, while advertisers could reach out directly to their target audience. Users would also have the option to upgrade to premium membership, which would be ad-free and include additional storage space and tools.

Storyboard

The Design Process

User/Task Flows: User and Task flows were developed from the research phase and two specific task flows were chosen for eventual prototyping.

Card Sorting: I conducted further user interviews with over 30 key words and six different categories in a closed card-sort in order to determine the site’s information architecture and navigation.

Results/Similarity Matrix: I created a results and similarity matrix using the feedback from my card sorting exercise. The 32 key words and six categories were organized into a color-coded results matrix by individual user response, and a similarity matrix was used to evaluate the frequency of key word to category associations.

Sitemap: I developed a sitemap using the data from my similarity matrix. The sitemap included a user dashboard and four main categories including planning, communications, marketing and resources, along with a log-in/sign-up screen and contact section.

Style Guide/UI Component Library: A style guide included several different versions of the logo, along with a color scheme and font selection for the text and headlines. From there, I developed a User Interface Compenent Library, which further included icon sets, cards, buttons, forms and search fields.

Wireframes: I created low, mid and high-fidelity wireframes of key screens, including the user dashboard, and select task flows. These evolved through multiple iterations with the goal of making the navigation as intuitive as possible.

UI Component Library

Mid and High-Fidelity Wireframes

Delivery

Prototyping/Usability Testing: Figma was used to design the wireframes and prototypes and to conduct virtual usability tests with six different users of varying technical ability. Two main task flows were selected for testing:

  • Searching for a vendor

  • Sending a reminder to guests.

The time to complete the two tasks ranged from 25-65 seconds. The average number of errors was 1.2. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the easiest to use, the median score was 9.

Success metrics were measured by time to complete the task in addition to the average number of errors.

Qualitative testing showed that most participants reacted favorably to the site and found it visually appealing and easy to use.

Figma Prototype

Iterations

After all user feedback was gathered, the following iterations were implemented:

  • Add a “Create an Event” page as users expect to begin their journey there

  • Make the photos in the cards active links

  • Simplify the language on the cards with straightforward terms and shorter descriptions

  • Change terms like “Resources” to “Search” and “Messages” to “Inbox” as the original language was too vague

Iterations based on feedback

Feedback Grid

The feedback grid allowed me to organize
all of the information I gathered during the
usability tests, from what worked well to
pain points and confusion to questions that
arose to ideas that came out of the process.
By grouping this data, I could instantly see what problems would be high impact, low effort changes based on the amount of participants who struggled, and the preponderance of errors.

The most notable differences included swapping out the buttons and icons for cards and images. This not only made it easier for users to navigate the site, but also created additional branding opportunities. The high-fidelity wireframes prominently feature people of every age in each photo. Event planning is all about people after all! Not only did it add a neccessary personal touch, but it also gives off a fun and welcoming vibe.

Feedback Grid

The Final Product