Geek-it! Events
I was hired by Geek-it! Events to design a responsive website promoting party events in the Quebec region. They wanted a solution that would encourage ticket sales and allow their clients to learn more about their brand. I was hired to both design and build the website in under 3 weeks.
Overview
Project Brief
GEEK-IT! is a Montreal based organiser of events for the gaming, cosplay and pop culture community. They organize dozens of shows, community activities and eSports tournaments every year. Coming out of the pandemic, the GEEK-IT! team wanted to create a platform allowing their customers to connect with their brand, view their event calendar and purchase tickets online.
Team
UX Designer: Matei Anghel
Client: Tom Sun
Timeline
Research & design: 2 weeks
Wordpress build: 1 week
The design approach
I utilised a design thinking approach to understand GEEK-IT! customers and design a digital solution that would resonate with their users, ultimately helping GEEK-IT! accomplish their business goals.
Tools used
Geeky fun!
GEEK-IT! events ultimately caters to a young adult customer base that identified heavily with animé and video game cultures. Furthermore, the premise of the website is fun and simple. I therefore designed with these two elements in mind as you will see below.
Empathise & Define
Existing Brand Image
The GEEK-IT! company has been around since 2019 and already had an established brand image. They had an established social media presence accross multiple channels with photography and graphic assets I could draw from. They also had a separate business line (GEEK-IT! Marketplace) which was a Shopify-powered marketplace. It would be important for me to design a solution that would fit seamlessly into the existing brand.
Customer base & persona
The GEEK-IT! team was able to provide me with detailed information about their typical event-goers. Using the information I was able to build a very quick person that would inform my design decisions.
Ideate & Design
UI inspiration
Now that the brand image and persona were clearly defined, I wanted to ensure that I was designing a website that would be stylistically appealing for my customer (Geek-it!). Thankfully, they provided me with an example of a design they found appealing: the Café Campus website.
Top fold
The Cafe Campus website is simple and clean, with lots of white space and large colourful hero images. The main landing page consists of an image with overlaid text clearly indicating the premise of the business.
Upcoming event details
Any upcoming events were advertised using this format. A poster dominates the section and the details of the event are represented clearly and simply along the heading and side bars.
Sketching & Lo-Fi prototypes
I drew some preliminary sketches and low fidelity prototypes in Figma to show my client and ensure I was heading in the right direction. To speed up my work, I used the Relume Figma library.
Hi-Fi Prototyping
Once my client approved the design direction, I began to add colour and design the hi-fidelity prototype. To ensure I was as efficient and timely as possible, I validated the design often with my customer to ensure I did not miss the mark. We went through a number of iterations before arriving a final solutions that the customer approved.
Hero image & poster design
To put the finishing touches on the website, I spent some time playing with past event media and different colours and effects to create hero image assets that were unique and eye catching for each home page. I also designed event posters for a number of upcoming dance party events with specific guidance from the customer on style and content.
Test & Implement
Wordpress building
Due to the short timeline on this project, we did not have time to perform user testing before implementation. However, given the customer having a very clear idea of their audience, they felt comfortable approving the website internally and moving forward with implementation. I built the website using Wordpress and the Themify Ultra no-code plugin which enabled me to build a product optimized for both mobile and desktop.
Results
The website was greatly successful in helping to promote the Geek-it! Events brand and funneling customers to purchase tickets online. Subsequent Geek-it! clubbing events were attended by over 300 people and popularity has continued increasing month-to-month.
