Understanding the Event Planning Workflow
Splash | 2019
Splash users span multiple industries and revenue brackets, and different internal departments had categorized customers and their event planning workflows differently over the years. As the company’s first user researcher, my first undertaking was to deeply understand our users and how they plan and execute events.
Methods
Stakeholder interviews
Blueprinting
Synthesis workshops
Primary Research Questions
What is the end-to-end event workflow of our users?
Where does Splash fit in?
Do needs and behaviors change depending on event type? If so, how?
Process
During recruiting I cast a wide net, using Salesforce data to create equal representation of the different user segments. The research squad (two product managers, one designer, and myself) ended up with 44 teams willing to participate in two-hour blueprinting workshops, where we had key team members from Amazon, Facebook, Tableau, REI, Athleta, Oscar, Comcast, Chanel, and others walk us through the steps they take to plan and host an event.
During the process, we kept a blueprinting blog so that Splash stakeholders could stay up to date on who we were talking to and what we were learning about different teams. This gave visibility to the customer success or account managers that couldn’t travel along with us, and also helped teach the organization a bit about user research.
When we were done, we spent a week together using several synthesis activities (content analysis, clustering, emotion plotting) to level up an average event workflow, the tools used to throw an event, the team members and stakeholders involved, the pain points encountered during the process, and what our users would change if they had a magic wand. Our deliverables included a journey map, a list of jobs to be done, and an insights and recommendations report for executive stakeholders. The synthesis also provided the foundation for our user personas, which I talk more about here.
Learnings
One of the biggest insights represented by the journey map is that Splash makes up just a small part of the event planning workflow (and that’s okay).
This is important because previous attempts had been made to encompass other parts of the workflow up and downstream of the event, such as contact management and survey building. We found that users love us for what we do best—creating and managing beautifully designed event pages—and that we can create more value for our users by properly integrating with their tech stack so that they can work better with their teammates and stakeholders.
As for our primary research question, we found that the biggest difference between workflows occurred not between industry or team, but between one-off and repeatable events. Whether an event was custom (think conferences or festivals) or repeatable (think recruiting or subscriber events) made the biggest difference in the way users think about design, scale, and ROI. Meanwhile, how curated a guest list was had the largest impact on the amount of work that our power users had to put into the event. This was largely the result of an increased need to gather lists from stakeholders, keep them in the loop on RSVPs, and update the guest list as needed.
Similarly, this research taught as that each organization has just one or two Splash users, and that they import and export in and out of Splash ad infinitum to keep their stakeholders and other team members in the loop.
“To work together on a Splash page requires several different tools,” one participant said. This is largely due to the lack of guardrails placed on other users. For example, planners are afraid of letting their stakeholders in the tool to update the guest list for fear that those stakeholders will “mess up their work.” When asked what they’d fix if they had a magic wand, users said they’d make Splash so easy that anyone could use it.
Product Outcome
This project has impacted the road map in a number of ways, including:
Building for a new type of user (see personas post for more detail).
Creating permissions and modes for different types of users and their different level of expertise.
De-prioritizing the contacts manager and ROI dashboard in favor of strong integrations and a more user-friendly CMS.
Using jobs to be done to speak about user needs and upcoming work.