Timeline
Nov 2019 — Jan 2020
My role
User research
Prototyping
Interaction design
Workshop facilitation
Platform
Web
Challenge
Every year, Davos brings together 3,000 participants from around the world and aims to facilitate collaboration and discussion on various topics but it increasingly fell to engage with its global online audience.
The event experience online traffic had been down by 1/3rd in 2019 and we were tasked with designing a new experience that would be attractive to remote users and increase engagement pre, during and post-event.
Approach
I redesigned the online event experience from the ground up to reflect the needs of a global audience that, in 2020, is keen to see more transparency and impact from major political and business events like Davos.
As the lead designer on the project, I worked closely with software engineers and the World Economic Forum digital and content team to design an online experience that is as rewarding and engaging as the physical experience of being at Davos.
Remote Audience-Centric Experience
We started by interviewing a diverse group of users who were already familiar with the event to understand:
User behaviours and preferences when experiencing political or business events online
What matters most to a remote audience at different stages of the event
Pain points with the current Davos online experience
Based on insights gathered from these interviews we ran co-design sessions with the same group of users, guiding them in creating their ideal online event experience pre, during and post-event, using UI modules they could move around on a digital board.
Information and Data Driven Hub
We learned that fast access to event details and highlight sessions (date, speakers, themes, sessions…) was valuable to users who could plan for the event ahead and make time to watch live sessions when they happen.
The new homepage encourages the audience to explore and learn about the curated topics, increasing engagement before the event has even started.
Making Live and Past Sessions Discoverable
A brand new colour-coded event programme helps users find sessions of interest at a glance. The programme is searchable and filterable by theme and day, giving users the tools to explore and quickly find sessions.
A Curated Event Experience
Themes are the cornerstone of Davos. They reflect what the global political and business community cares most about and create the narrative for the event.
The new experience needed to help users navigate through the website, helping them find the most relevant sessions easily. We redesigned the experience with themes in mind, providing a dedicated and colour coded “hub” page for each of them. These theme hubs made it easier for the Forum content team to promote related content and for the remote audience to dive into any of these themes.
Results
We were given 2.5 months to redesign and build the new experience, with Davos 2020 (mid-Jan) as a hard deadline.
In that time we ran user interviews with a global and diverse group of participants and redesigned and built the new experience from the ground up.
As a result, 1.2 million users visited the event website during the 5 days Davos event.