07. Field Research
REED EXHIBITIONS
Role: Field Research • Customer interviews • Client workshop facilitation • UI Design • Wireframes • Prototyping
London, UK 2015 - 2016
Events, B2B, B2C
The Challenge
Reed Exhibitions specialises in events organisation. The company rapidly expanded across the globe, resulting varied event experience from country to country.
The challenge was how to create a single digital experience that showcased the best services from each country therefore providing a unified Reed Exhibitions experience that worked for their new global customer base.
Method & Process
My objective was to help the client get a shared understanding of existing event experiences by facilitating workshops with with global Reed Exhibition stakeholders representing from Canada, America, UAE, China, France and Austria.
During the workshops I divided the stakeholders into mixed global teams. I then introduced them to design thinking methods by getting them to participate in exercises that put customer needs first e.g. empathy maps and journey maps.
I created a user research exercise that helped them turn their customer assumptions into questions to answer during field research. I chose to conduct field research at Reed Exhibitions biggest UK event as it would be a great opportunity to showcase the diverse way design research can help to understand their business but it would also allow clients (some for the first time) from different global offices to experience a UK event.
After a successful day at the event each team had to synthesise their research and present findings back to the rest of the team. We then ranked and voted on the ideas, the top idea was a personalised digital service for exhibitors to guide them through the end to end exhibition process.
Empathy map exercise
Journey map exercise
Field research prep exercise
Field research day
Participating in field research
Discussing field research insights
Exhibition insight
Sketching the experience
Creating the first prototype
First iteration
The first iteration of the personalised digital service was the Exhibitor Dashboard, its aim was to improve the way meetings are conducted and connections made throughout an exhibition.
Over the next few weeks I designed the experience and further refined it by conducting user interviews with existing exhibitors. The results of the interviews provided direction for the development team, we collaborated to build a working Android prototype that we then tested at another UK based exhibition.
Prototype: 1st iteration of Exhibitor Dashboard
Learnings
At the end of the week the clients commented on the workshop experience. They mentioned that they enjoyed exercises and that it would be something they would engage in again, perhaps with their own teams once they returned.
During the workshops I observed the conversations between colleagues from different global offices and it was great to hear them discuss and learn about each others differences. This was an added bonus from the week!
Overall I believe there is great value in learning by doing. The client learned about their customers and learned about the value of design.