VIVID SYDNEY 2016

TitleVIVID SYDNEY 2016
BrandDESTINATION NSW
Product / ServiceVIVID SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2016
CategoryA01. Interface & Navigation (UI)
EntrantDESTINATION NSW Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation DRIFTER Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Production DRIFTER Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Joshua Hunt Drifter Creative Director
Christine Sultana Drifter Executive Producer
Diana Kahui Destination NSW Director of Digital
Nina Malmström Destination NSW Digital Projects Manager
Earnest Capangpangan Drifter Designer
Philip Ip Drifter Solutions Architect
Kristen Boyton Destination NSW Digital Campaign Manager
Hana Kiddle Destination NSW Digital Campaign Manager
Hugh Cashmore Destination NSW Digital Campaign Manager
Thomas Wilhelm Destination NSW Digital Developer
Cassandra Martinenko-Barter Destination NSW Manager, Social Media

The Campaign

Vivid Sydney positions the city as the creative hub of Australia and the Asia Pacific region and delivers innovative live entertainment and inspiration on a grand scale. Vivid Sydney is where art, technology and commerce intersect. It is a summit, forum and playground for the creative industries, and the app needed to reflect this in its design and its functionality. The Vivid Sydney 2016 mobile apps for iOS and Android were relaunched with a range of design-led innovations. Through a mixture of continuous design and animation principles, gesture based interaction and a streamlined user interface, the new Vivid Sydney apps were a showcase for best practice application design and interaction. This design coupled with dynamic, geo-fenced content meant the apps offered genuine, on the ground utility for event visitors, which in turn led to the amazing number of downloads.

Creative Execution

Through a combination of intuitive design, continuous animation techniques, gesture based interactivity, location based content and content personalisation, Vivid Sydney 2016 was brought to life for the app user. During a three month development period, the app was improved across UX and design interface, search functionality and date selection from the 2015 apps. In addition, precinct promotion across Sydney was increased, and geo-location services were integrated. Historically, ‘Light’ is the most well-known and most attended of the three pillars. It was vital that in the 2016 app, all three of Vivid Sydney’s core pillars were given equal weight, to entice Vivid ‘Light’ event goers to branch out and experience all that Vivid Sydney has to offer. This was addressed on the launch screen, making each pillar a focus and encouraging multiple page views.

The improvements to UX, content and design of the 2016 Vivid Sydney apps were reflected in the results: • 88,000 downloads (up 14% YoY, beating our target of a 10% increase) • 1.01 million events viewed • 46,000 favourites were added • 2.5 million screen views recorded • The app was ranked #6 on Google Play within all Travel & Transport applications, and #1 on iTunes within New Apps And the Vivid Sydney festival delivered: • 2.31 million attendees • 54,000 Vivid Ideas attendees • 88,300 Vivid Sydney travel packages were sold • Over 44,100 international; over 44,200 domestic • 17, 827 visitors from China bought Vivid Sydney travel packages • More than132,000 attendees at Vivid Music events • More than 54,000 attended Vivid Ideas events • Over 2.2 million visits to www.vividsydney.com

As smartphone users’ expectations increase with ever-more intuitive apps on the market, the Vivid Sydney 2016 apps needed to be simple, functional and frictionless, to enhance the event experience. There is no ‘average’ visitor to Vivid Sydney, with the target audience spanning young singles, families, younger and older couples, as well as creative professionals, and both regional and overseas visitors. With this broad user base, the apps needed to be effortless to use, and widely visually appealing. The key learnings and improvements identified from the 2015’s apps were that the majority of users only interacted with the primary navigation of the app. Knowing this, the retracted navigation was removed, and the user experience (UX) was updated to make all key content sections the primary focus of the design. They were made accessible directly from the home screen, enabling a frictionless experience.

Links

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