Vancouver International Film Festival — a redesign [UX Case Study]
The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is a festival that holds over 500 events (film screenings, Creator Talks, exhibitions) across 9 venues over a span of 16 days. It is the largest showcase of Canadian cinema and draws in over 130,000 visitors. You can imagine how hectic navigating the festival can be if you’re trying to watch three or more films a day all located at different venues (just take a look at their schedule). Our team was tasked with revamping VIFF’s current festival app and providing an experience tailored to festival-goer needs. Given the short time frame of this project, we focused mainly on film screenings and not the additional events or exhibitions offered during the festival.
The team:
Four UX designers: Amanda, Miriam, Rafay, and myself
Two UI designers: Achal and Newton.
Timeline: 6 weeks
Goals
Business: To draw in a new younger demographic while still enhancing the experience for the existing users and to eventually have the app function as an advertising asset.
User: To build a personalized festival schedule that notifies them of scheduling conflicts. Find information for the available films and rate/review them.
Project: To create a supplemental tool to VIFF’s paper program guide that allows the users to carry the festival in their pockets. Also to provide a seamless transition between the festival and year-round screenings to encourage app usage throughout the year.
Discovery
Understanding the Problem
VIFF is in its 38th year and has always printed its events on paper program guides. Three years ago, our client decided to implement a festival app based on apps she saw from other festivals.
The current app is built using Attendify, an event conference kit app, that is cost-effective and relatively easy to set up. There are a few current successes:
- It’s relatively cheap to set up, which is important to non-profit organizations.
- There are some features such as bookmarking events, adding notes to certain events, and maps that enhance the festival-going experience.
- Allows users to interact with each other on the activity stream.
However, being a kit app, there are several limitations:
- It doesn’t provide a tailored experience
- It is not visually appealing which does not translate VIFF’s brand of being a visual medium
- The users currently have to download a new app each year as the app does not transition from festival-season to off-season.
Most of the pain points are a result of using a kit app, which by designing something from scratch, my team and I were given a lot of freedom to explore different solutions.
Domain Research
Since our client decided to create the app after experiencing other festival apps, our team decided to look into other film festivals that were of similar size for reference. We found that not many festivals had apps but had websites that were more responsive than VIFF’s, which may have eliminated the need for an app. As a result, we felt that there was a big opportunity for us to improve VIFF’s app and creating a unique festival-going experience.
Research
User Interviews
After understanding the backend pain points, we wanted to understand how the current users felt about the app. We interviewed 5 of the top 16 users of the current app.
We were interested in seeing if there were functions that the users currently use to build their own schedules that we could include in our app. Our client also liked the idea of users interacting with each other on the app, but we wanted to see if the users felt that that function was necessary.
Jen’s Blurb: I’m not a film enthusiast myself so it was really interesting to explore the behaviours of attendees who have been part of the scene for years. I was really shocked to hear that one of our interviewees would spend up to 70 hours researching which films to watch. I could really experience the passion they had for the film and for VIFF through our conversations.
Survey
Despite gaining valuable insight from our interviews, we realized that most of our interviewees were of an older demographic. In order to meet one of the business goals in drawing in a younger demographic, we sent out a survey hoping to reach our target users. We had the original idea of asking questions targeted towards VIFF and its app but we were already seeing recurring pain points from our interviews. Therefore, we decided that focusing on film selection behaviours would be more beneficial for us in deciding how to organize our information architecture.
These results further solidified the importance of including more film information on the app. Netflix and Prime Video were the top two subscribed streaming platforms. So we wanted to reference their apps to align with our target users' mental model for film apps.
Planning
Affinity Diagram
After our research phase, we laid out our research findings using an affinity diagram. This exercise allowed us to visualize common themes found in our research. It was also the first step to creating our information architecture (IA). As we organized our data, what information was most important to our users came together in one category, which became the skeleton for our film profile page.
Getting to know our target users
Our affinity diagram highlighted user needs and pain points that we included in our persona. We wanted to align with our client’s business goals to draw in a new crowd so we came up with Drake Smith.
Drake, 24, is a film enthusiast who loves supporting local talent and sharing his love for film with his friends. This is his first year attending VIFF.
He’s juggling post-grad courses and freelance photography gigs, so he always needs help organizing his time.
We wanted our app to be intuitive to a first-time user so we designed with Drake in mind. The addition of the custom schedule along with notifications would allow Drake to easily navigate through his festival experience.
Given more time, our team would have included a secondary persona for VIFF’s main demographic which would have given us more insights into existing VIFF attendees. However, we wanted to prioritize the business goal of bringing in a younger demographic.
Information Architecture (IA)
Being a film festival with so many screenings, events, and other information, we knew that the IA would be a large thing to tackle. With so many events packed into such a short period of time, we wanted there to be enough information on the app but also to not overwhelm Drake.
We debated on whether we wanted a dedicated tab for the festival but decided against it as we wanted the experience to be a seamless transition between the festival and year-round screenings. Instead, we made the distinction between year-round and festival screenings using a tag on the film profile pages.
We landed on five main tabs/pages:
1. Home: festival news, recommended films, and the user’s film list allowing the user to be updated on current events and browse films
2. Search: filter options, and lists of featured or popular films allowing the user to search for films in a specific category
3. My Lists: the user’s bookmarks and custom schedule allowing the user to bookmark all films of interest but only build their custom schedule after selecting a specific screening time for the film
4. My Tickets: the user’s screening tickets for easy access
5. More: account and membership information, previously written reviews, and help center
We also structured the IA for our film and event profile pages. We made sure to include the essential film information found from our surveys.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Our affinity diagram showed many pain points that needed solutions; however, we decided that our MVP was going to be an app that allows our users to browse films, read and write reviews, and add it to their personal schedule.
How did we arrive at this MVP?
We plotted the desired features then separated those features into must-have and nice to have buckets within the matrix, then we were able to narrow down our app.
Through our interviews, we found that most people will conduct their own research on the films they want to watch and the app is really just a tool for them to schedule their screenings and make sure they get to each theatre when they’re supposed to. To reiterate our project goal, the focus was to have the users carry the festival in their pockets.
We wanted an app that would supplement the existing paper guide and website. An app that holds enough information on-the-go for our users during the festivals and for year-round screenings, but also doesn’t overload them with the information they could find on VIFF’s website.
User Flows
With our MVP and IA in mind, we began to map out our user flows. Miriam mapped out the current kit app user flows and Amanda and I mapped out revised user flows. In the current app, each event (e.g. screening, Creator Talk, exhibition) was located on a separate tab; however, the flows within them were the same. We wanted to simplify our flows by combining them so they could be accessed through one page rather than separate tabs.
Based on the MVP, we came up with the following current flows:
- Search films by using filters
- Finding directions to a venue
- Browse a film’s profile page
3a. purchase tickets
3b. Read and write a review
3c. Add a bookmarked film to a custom schedule and resolve a scheduling conflict
Design
Wireframes
Before starting our wireframes, we looked up film apps such as Netflix and Prime video which were the most subscribed streaming services as found from our survey because we wanted to emulate the layouts and style so that the screens would be familiar to users.
In an attempt to align with VIFF’s brand values and make the application more visual, our users are greeted with displays of movie posters right when they open the app.
To further the tailored experience, after logging into the application, the user is prompted with a questionnaire that asks them for their favorite movie genres to tailor their experience.
Although we knew what we wanted to include on our film profile page, we made a few iterations. We originally wanted to have the film information and reviews on separate tabs to allow the user to choose what they wanted to view. However, the screen became cluttered so we decided to just have the reviews farther down on the page for the users to scroll to.
User Testing
With our MVP and IA in mind, we began to map out our user flows. In the current app, each event (e.g. screening, Creator Talk, exhibition) was located on a separate tab; however, the flows within them were the same. We wanted to simplify our flows by combining them so they could be accessed through one page rather than separate tabs.
We also wanted to test our user flows to ensure that the experience was easy to follow. We set up four tasks that incorporated our flows.
Feedback
“The app is clean and familiar. It fits with my mental model for these types of apps.”
This feedback was validating as it was what we wanted to achieve by referencing apps such as Netflix and Prime Video to provide familiarity to our users.
“I have a busy schedule so it would be nice if I could see what films have screenings during my availability.”
Validated the inclusion of the date filter open; however, we didn’t include in our prototype so the user was unable to use the feature.
After bookmarking a film, the button darkens which was misleading for some participants after having them go back onto the film profile page to purchase tickets. They thought that the button was to purchase tickets. This was corrected in our high fidelity screens.
We were unable to contact existing users to user test, which was unfortunate because the feedback would have been more specific. None of us on the team have had previous experience with film festivals which could have resulted in us missing some points.
The Solution
An app that holds enough information on-the-go for our users during the festivals and for year-round screenings, but also doesn’t overload them with the information they could find on VIFF’s website.
The app allows user to browse films and essential film information, read and write film reviews, and bookmark films then add them to a custom schedule. Our users will be alerted of screening conflicts and purchase tickets through the app.
See our full prototype linked below:
Future Considerations
Features:
- Adding notes to films: through our interviews, we found that our users like to write notes about the films before or after watching the films and refer back to it later
- Show screening times up front: when you’re at the festival, it’s more likely that you want to be able to view all screenings at once rather than go through the flow of selecting
- Sharing the users’ custom schedules with their friends: our survey results showed that 84% go to film screenings with friends or their family/partner; having a feature that allows our users to share their schedules could enhance their experience.
Final Thoughts
I learned a lot through this project such as the importance of narrowing down to an MVP and not just categorizing data within an affinity diagram but also seeing the connections within the diagram. This project had so many possible features that it was quite difficult for us but without that process, we would have been swamped with tasks.
Experiencing the passion of these film buffs that have attended VIFF for years talk about the amount of time they dedicate to researching what films to watch was quite fascinating. They were also very willing to help our client out which made our lives a lot easier.
