Traction Gather
A hub to bring virtual events and on-demand content under one digital roof.
The Challenge
The pandemic has made its mark on many industries since Spring ‘20, but it’s taken a particularly large toll on those that draw revenue from in-person events. At Traction on Demand, we had several clients that were facing difficulties including nonprofits dependent on fundraisers, community centers dependent on memberships fees and companies dependent on events to stay connected with employees. They needed a solution to maintain their revenue streams and stay afloat both during the pandemic and into a future in which remote options would only become more prevalent.
My Role
As the design lead, I worked closely with solution architects, events managers and developers to design, build and test a proof of concept. I then took a lead role in the design of the fully featured platform from initial wireframes through to the first high fidelity prototypes and build.
Team
An agile team of 3 developers, a product manager, a quality analyst and me.
Length
4 Months, Full Time
Proof of Concept
Given the immediate need in the market at the beginning of the pandemic, our team had to move quickly. Without the time and resources to conduct in depth user research, we documented our assumptions and leveraged out of the box components available on the Salesforce Experience Cloud platform and Zoom to rapidly build a proof of concept (POC). As I am well versed in Experience Cloud, I both designed and played a large role in building the POC.
To test our concept, we held an internal fundraising event and ran pilot events for a few select clients. The product was well received and feedback was generally positive, however, it became clear that there was a need for a much more wide ranging and full featured solution.
The homepage for an internal fundraising event held on our POC.
The tables page for an internal fundraising event held on our POC.
Competitor Analysis
With key lessons learned from our pilot program, we began researching the alternatives that were currently available in the market. Still working on a tight timeline, we conducted a high level competitor analysis which focused on key features, service offerings and pricing across a range of virtual event management platforms. This gave us a good general overview of what features were expected in these types of solutions and how we could take our product a step beyond these more traditional event platforms.
A brief competitor analysis.
Proto Persona
As the research phase of the project was very short, we lacked the resources to conduct a full round of user interviews. However, to ensure we were at least capturing our assumptions about our end users, I lead a team problem definition workshop and created a couple of proto-personas to align on what problems we needed to solve.
A proto-persona created based on the results of a team problem definition workshop.
Wireframes
Learnings from piloting the POC provided direction for the next iteration of design. Now focused on the concept of a digital engagement center, the solution had two key elements, a membership based ‘virtual hub’ where users could find both on demand and regularly scheduled live content, and a special event module where larger multi-day virtual events could be held. These two separate but connected elements provide organizations with considerable flexibility in how they engage with their constituents. I developed a set of user flows and wireframes to explore possibilities and test different approaches with both stakeholders and prospective end users.
Virtual hub homepage
Virtual hub live event
Special event home page
Virtual hub homepage event modal
Virtual hub on demand event
Special event on demand listings
Virtual Hub Prototype
With wireframes refined through several rounds of internal review and user testing, I leveraged Adobe XD to build a hifi prototype of the product. This prototype allowed for further testing, gave stakeholders a clear understanding of what would be built and developers a clear understanding of how to build it.
Virtual hub homepage
Virtual hub ‘Saved for Later’ page
Virtual hub on demand event
Special Event Prototype
Special event countdown
Special event home page with no live content
Special event home with live content
Special event multi day agenda
Event modal
Mobile Virtual Center
Given the high rates of mobile content consumption among our users (even when at home), a simplified mobile design ensured a smooth and feature rich experience across a wide range of devices.
Virtual hub mobile home page
Virtual hub mobile category page
Virtual hub mobile on demand event
Virtual hub mobile menu
Mobile Special Event
Special event mobile countdown
Special event mobile home page with live content
Special event mobile agenda
Special event mobile event modal
SLDS & UI Kit
As the product was built on Salesforce Experience cloud, we leveraged Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) as our design language. The UI Kit I developed clearly distinguished between SLDS components and fully custom components to ensure the development team understood how to build the solution in the most efficient was possible.
SLDS components used in the design
Blueprint for the content tile custom component
Blueprints for simple custom components used in the design
Outcomes
Since the minimum viable product was built in summer ‘20, Gather has been leveraged by many organizations to run conferences and events that were facing cancellation due to Covid-19. The recently released Digital Engagement Hub has seen great success among community centers and nonprofit clients and now has a dedicated product development team to continue to add functionality and expand its customer base.
“We can now add value to our membership by offering virtual live programming as well as an extensive library of pre-recorded sessions with the instructors that our members know and love. We are thrilled with the product we can now offer our members.”
- Jill Davidson, Director of Information Management Systems, Mandel JCC of Cleveland