Overview

One of big challenges our team have to face is that we were both not familiar with San Francisco nightlife and were not bar regulars. To understand our audience, including consumers and players, we have to conduct extensive user needs assessment (62 subjects totally), including structured interviews, surveys, experimental testing. At the same time, we have to go out more to communicate with our potential users.

The following six studies have provided strong base for our project in defining user needs and designing value-added features to our targeted users. All related documents like survey kits, analysis reports, etc, are available on this page.

 

1. Exploratory Survey

On Fall 2000, a survey was conducted to understand what infrequent nightlife consumers are looking for when they plan to go out. The questionaries are free-text questions, in the purpose of exploring factors that are important to consumers. The survey was deployed within the circle of our friends, most of them from SIMS. We received 20 respondents and the results show that most important information consumers need to know are music (90%), price (76%), clientele (71%), atmophere (66%) and location/transportation (66%).

View full Survey Questionaire | Report of survey: SFnight Experiment (within pre-pilot test section) [PDF]
Fall 2000, SIMS, Usability & Statistics

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2. Preference Survey

The purpose of this survey is to understand frequent consumers in terms of how important every kind of venue/event information means to consumers and what helpful features we can provide. Among 23 respondents, 70% of them are frequent consumers (go out more than 5 times a month). The results of this survey which we find very useful for our project are:

Music type, atmosphere and clientele are top three factors consumers want to know;

Consumers' information-seeking behaviors vary depeding on their going-out frequencies.

Factor analysis shows venue/event information can be classified into three categories: music information, environment information and others like address, prices, etc.

Besides friends, websites and newsletter are the two most frequently-used nightlife information resources.

Among such features as buy ticket online, customer reviews, editorial reviews, music sample, video sample, consumers think music sample is most helpful one, while in general all features are consideded helpful by both frequent and non-freqnet cnosumers.

View full Survey Questionaire | Data Analysis [PDF]
Spring 2001, SIMS, SFnight Final Project

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3. Experimental Testing: Competitors

The purpose of this testing is to compare three nightlife websites: citysearch, sfgate and la2nite, in terms of site usability, recommendation system, as well as information effectiveness. 10 subjects were tested and all of them come from the campus.

Site usability can be divided into two factors: one comprises several goals of information design, including elements of cognitive perception: process, organization, efficiency, and rationality. The other comprises elements of visual design, that manipulates sense perception, and attractiveness.

Site recommendation system is useful for nightlife consumers, but it has to be carefully designed to avoid information overload

Present site recommendation system clearly and upfront;

Nightlife website should provide detailed information for each venue they list, rather than list many venues with little information for each

Besides its testing results, this testing also inspired us with new ideas like "Add to a List to Email Friends" for our prototype, when we watched how consumers use nightlife websites and what they need.

View full Experimental Testing
"How well this website can help people to make a decision on where to go tonight?"
Fall 2000, SIMS, Usability & Statistics

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4. Structured Interviews: Personalization

On Spring 2001, with the purpose of analysing personalization and customization features, we conducted three interviews with frequent users, all students (SIMS and UC). We used those interviews in the creation of Personas, a concept developed by Alan Cooper in The Inmates are Running the Asylum (1999). Personas is interactive design method to help better focus the user interface design process in goals and tasks of believed potential users. Personas are kind of user profiles, or hypothetical archetypes, detailed enough to include what a potential user would wishes to accomplish.

This study was relevant in our user interface design process, specially regarding the personalized features of MySFnight. Some of the results were:

Validate some of the previous features of the first prototype (e-pub);

Identify potential tasks, their importance & frequency for frequent nighlife consumers

Identified the need of a Event Calendar of MySFnight;

Mapped other features for further studies and development (view Scenario Tasks and Preliminary Features based on Potential Needs).

Identified the main issues that a designer have to overcome on designing personalization features: privacy; easy to use; usefulness.

View report SFnight: Personalization and Customization Features, more specifically Personas & Goals section.
Spring 2001, SIMS, User Interface Design [Monica Fernandes, with 213 team: Rosa Ren, Bin Xin, Hong Cae].

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PLAYERS 2 studies

 

5. Structured Interviews

We conductd three structured interviews with one club owner and two promoters. The purpose of these interviews is to understand how players operate their daily business, what is the relationship between venue owners, promoters and DJs, as well as how well they connect to Internet.

These interviews serve as a strong base for our design of network page. Along with our discussion with our project consultant, we are able to design site features on network page which cater to players' daily business needs and interests.

View full Structured Interview Protocol for Bar Owner | for Promoter [PDF]
Spring 2001, SIMS, SFnight Final Project

6. Connectivity Survey

The purpose of this 6-question survey is to know about how well players are connected to Internet, by what media they promote their venue/events, as well as whether they submit their information for free listings.

Based on 6 responses (one club owner, 4 promoters, and 1 party producer) for our survey, we can say that players will feel comfortable to use our free services and will take the opportunity to promote their venues / events through our website. This conclusion is based on three findings from our survey:

All players have Internet skills, although with different levels
Majority of players use their own websites or other websites for promotion
Majority of players submit their information for free listings.

View Player Survey Questionaire [PDF] | Survey Report [PDF]
Spring 2001, SIMS, SFnight Final Project