Works -

Buzzcast

A virtual conferencing platform where the software is re-branded as per customer(company) needs.

OVERVIEW

BuzzCast is a virtual conferencing platform built for large events having multiple speakers and tracks. It is a managed service for brands and educators who want to get their event done right and on-brand.

Problem Statement

Discover the pain points of the current web application and propose solutions to improve user experience.

To implement networking features for the participants attending the conference.

Background Research

I had a workshop with the client along with the presence of the manager to discuss the issues faced while having a live conference session. After discussing the product and some of the major issues from both the User and Business side we got an idea of the product. Next, I had to perform the usability testing on the current product to list out the pain points.

Usability testing

We have 3 modules in the application user side screen(which I will be working on), presenter side and admin panel (for which we are using 3rd party integration from Bizzabo). Because of 3rd party integrations, I had to carefully proceed since there will be some restrictions on the changes that I will be proposing.

For testing, I had selected 12 users (all of them were first time users) since we were not able to find the existing participants. I had given a few tasks to be performed on the existing application.

Some of them are listed below.

Signup and attend your live conference.
You are not a big fan of attending live conferences but you want to watch your previous conferences. How will you watch it?
From the live conference page navigate through slides and the conference agenda.

Test insights

Based on the user feedback I have listed the points below

Note: Conference booking can be either made by the participant companies(If it’s a private conference) or through the 3rd party app(if the conference is public)

The participant liked the way of entering the live conference from the email link but wanted to see the landing page while signing-up from the portal.
The user liked to see his history of attended conferences and also wanted to revisit whenever required.
The user didn’t understand the concept of slides towards the right side of the screen and wanted to see those while presenting only.
The user wanted to network with the participants and set up a meeting when required(also was part of the initial requirement discussion)
Preferred to have a public chat to discuss in the session.

To determine the priorities, we did affinity mapping first with the stakeholders and then sorted as per the priority

Lo-Fi wireframes

Based on the observed pain points and later ideating the task flow, I created multiple Lo-Fi wireframes to test and see the impact and also tried to keep changes as minimalistic as possible and optimize the user experience.

Hi-Fi Prototype

Landing page after Signup

After Signing-up the user lands on a homepage rather than the conference session page since most of the time there won’t be live sessions unless booked.

Having a Public chat

To trigger the networking ability I introduced public chat where users can discuss the session as well as initiate a one-on-one conversation by hovering over the participant name.

Checking out other conference sessions

To find out the interesting session topics and to know the overall conference what abouts the users can use the session tab, but while watching a live session the user will be missing the details, so to overcome this issue I have introduced picture-in-picture.

Networking with the participants

To network with the right participant, one has to match with the candidate having a similar mindset. So I introduced the “Match me” feature where the participants with similar intentions can be identified and notified to one another so that they can trigger the conversation.

Scheduling a meeting with the fellow participant

To take the conversation to the next level the participant can schedule the meeting from his chat screen.

Glance on before and after

Validation

Even though I had done the validation at every step of the process the final feedback gives us the overall image of the product experience.

Project learnings

Always try to have minimalistic design changes to the existing product unless it is extremely necessary.

Even small changes in experience or interface will have a major impact on the users unless it's a new product.