Case Study: Elektrik Eel

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1. The Problem
2. Personas
3. Competitor Analysis
4. Concepts
5. Design
6. Challenges Faced
7. Conclusion

The task: design and code from scratch a sample website for the Elektrik Eel music festival, that suited the target audience and represented the vibe of the electronic music festival.

With Elektrik Eel Festival looking to break into the competitive electronic music festival scene, their digital strategy will play a vital role in their success. My goal for their web design was to design and code a site that could convey a slick look and feel and excitement for the festival, while offering a smooth user experience.

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How might we… re-ignite excitement for electronic music through promoting a unique new festival experience?

1. The Problem

The electronic music industry is more popular than ever, with EDM music hitting billboard charts and filtering into mainstream pop. This also means it has become a saturated genre, and along with this comes a saturated industry of festivals. Countless electronic music festivals take place all over Australia each year.

With so many festivals competing for audience attention (and ticket purchases), crafting a unique festival is a challenge.

But Elektrik Eel aims to do just this. A high-end festival experience for 20-34 year olds that take their love of electronica seriously, Elektrik Eel has an opportunity to market itself as a unique offering.

2. Personas

My next step was – through analysing the problem and the target audience – to create user personas and their user journeys. My personas helped to create realistic reflections of the audience, what drives them, and their wants and needs from this kind of website. Below is a sample of a few of the personas and their user journeys I worked on.

3. Competitior Analysis

I did some research into finding who Elektrik Eel’s biggest competitor might be, and landed on Electric Gardens, a large electronic music festival with events all around Australia.

Much like Electrik Eel Festival, Electric Gardens puts a great deal of emphasis on quality over quantity, bring together the best new names in electronic music. Their website and brand image is bold and has a classic festival feeling, but lacks the maturity, a point of difference, and the appeal for sophisticated music lovers that Eletrik Eel will offer.

A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis helped me to fully analyse what this competitor did well and what their weaknesses were.

3.1 Competitor UX Testing

I wanted to delve deeper into what worked for this competitor and what didn’t, to ensure that my project offered what a user needed and wanted. So I ran a UX Testing session with 5 individuals on the Electric Gardens website, asking them to perform two tasks and observing the number of clicks and time it took to complete the task. I also noted any feedback the users mentioned as they went, and a sample of some of the results is below.

Overall, participants found that the competitor’s website was a little disorganised, and would benefit from clear information about when the next event is, along with more obvious locations for info on dress code and transport.

Interestingly, very few users scrolled below the fold on the homepage, indicating that critical info (e.g. event date) should be located above the fold.

This data gave me a springboard for designing the Elektrik Eel site.

4. Concept

My concept for the Elektrik Eel website takes on board competitor analysis, UX testing and the creation of a brand identity for Elektrik Eel.

Core features include:

• Striking teal and purple colour palette underscored by deep near-black, providing a sophisticated atmosphere

• Clear countdown clock, ticket link, artist list and plenty of appealing images

• FAQs have their own dedicated section with button for more, as a result of user testing requesting more clarity

The mobile design offered a similar aesthetic. Just as stylish as the desktop design but with added user-friendly elements, the mobile design will help cement Elektrik Eel’s place on the music scene.

5. Design

Given the short 8-week deadline for the website build, coupled with the compact size of the website (several pages), I concluded that I would move directly into the design and code phase.

The website was coded with HTML, CSS and Javascript, on a local server and built in VisualStudio Code.

Click here to interact with the design yourself.

6. Challenges Faced

Although I’ve created websites in my career as a graphic designer, I hadn’t coded one from scratch before. With no framework to lean on or platform to use, I had to start by coding the structure in HTML, the styling in CSS, and some extra functionality in Javascript. This was a new process for me, and a steep learning curve. I got so much out of this project though, and I’m tremendously happy with what I was able to deliver in a short 8-week turnaround.

There was also the challenge of ensuring that Elektrik Eel suited the target audience, needing to present itself as a higher-end alternative to other electronica festivals. It was an event that needed to come across as modern, clean, and above all, Instagram-worthy. I worked hard to create a concept for the design that encompassed this, was achieveable in the timeframe, offer a slick UX, and would place ticket sales at the forefront of the site goals.

7. Conclusion

The Elektrik Eel website is designed to foster the audience’s love for electronic music. Through a modern design, clear calls to action, and mobile and desktop friendly interfaces, it can offer a smooth experience for customers. The dark, cyber-style interface matches the type of music on offer, and my design for the logo seen in the corner of the website design conveys the Elektrik Eel vibe. I’m really pleased with this project and it was fun to create, and I can’t wait to tinker further with this site in the future.