Orbit
Local Event Discovery
Orbit is a research-led event discovery project designed to reduce missed events and improve how people find and plan social experiences in Vancouver.
Vancouverites miss out on events because local event information is fragmented and difficult to find
Understanding the Problem
My team and I originally set out to create a community-building platform. However, our research told a different story.
Through a city-wide survey and interviews with 6 Vancouver residents across Gen Z and millennial age groups, we found that people wanted to attend more events, but poor discovery meant they kept missing them.
Despite how much is happening in the city, the same message came up repeatedly:
"I didn't know this was happening"
We followed where the research led and refocused our direction toward improving event discovery in Vancouver.
My Role
Lead UX Designer
My Responsibilities
User research
Wireframes
IA & flows
UI contribution
Type of Project
University Group Project
Platforms
IOS
Timeline
14 Weeks
How Might We make it easier for Vancouverites to discover local events by centralizing fragmented information across multiple platforms?
Discovery
To understand how people find and plan events in Vancouver, we ran two surveys (41 total respondents) and conducted six interviews. This helped us uncover their behaviours, frustrations, and expectations around event discovery in the city.
Surveys
How People Currently Find Events
Participants use word-of-mouth, Instagram, posters, Facebook, Eventbrite/Meetup apps, TikTok, Google, and niche communities—and typically check 3–5 sources to find something to do.
“Things are too separated on the web”
“It’s annoying to look in multiple areas”
“It’s not easy to locate event sources near me”
What Gets in the Way
Across multiple-choice and open-text responses, five barriers stood out—finding out too late, information scattered across platforms, not knowing where to look, poor promotion, and the effort required to search everywhere—with “finding out too late” appearing in almost every response.
“Most of the time I find out too late to go”
“Events aren’t well advertised, I see them the day of”
“I want more last-minute updates”
What People Actually Want
Respondents rated potential features (1–5), with the most valuable being a real-time event map, personalized recommendations, filters for date/location/type/price, seeing who’s attending, and saving or bookmarking events.
Interviews
How People Discover Events Now
Interviews confirmed the survey findings: event discovery today is accidental, fragmented, and often too late.
“I see events on Instagram stories when people are already there”
“I found out the day after a workshop I wanted to attend”
“I’m not aware of events until they’re already happening”
Scattered Platforms = Missed Events
Interviewees repeatedly voiced the same frustrations: too many platforms to check, outdated or inconsistent information, no single place for everything, and difficulty revisiting events they’d scrolled past.
“I need things in one place. It’s overwhelming”
“if I see something that interests me and then I scroll or something, I lose it and I forget and I have trouble finding it again”
Demand for Real-Time Discovery
Participants showed strong interest in spontaneous, location-based discovery.
“A real-time map would be super useful”
“If I saw events on a map, I’d check it all the time”
“I’d go to more events if I knew what was close to me”
Early Insights
People aren’t missing events because they’re not interested
—they’re missing them because they can’t find them.
Vancouverites want one simple, centralized place to browse events
—not five separate apps
Timing is the real barrier
—discovering events too late is the main reason people don’t attend
Competitive Analysis
Why Isn’t There a Clear Solution?
Based on the tools people in Vancouver reported using, we found that each platform covers only parts of the event-discovery experience. Some offer strong filtering or community features, but none provide a seamless, end-to-end way to find events in real time.
Feature Analysis
What we found here
My team and I compared four major event-related platforms against the five features users rated most important: bookmarking, filtering, personalized recommendations, real-time discovery, and map visualization.
Core Requirements
Three clear product requirements emerged from the research:
Centralize
Bring all Vancouver event information into one place.
Surface in Real Time
Show what’s happening now and what’s coming up today.
Reduce Decision Effort
Provide clear details, intuitive filters, and lightweight saving.
Information Architecture
Navigation Model
Intro to this
Home
Near You
Trending
Featured
Recently Added
Upcoming
Profile
Interests and calendar:
Bookmarks
Interests
Calendar
A personalized hub for planning:
Your Orbit
Real-Time Map
For You
Orbit Cluster (friends activity)
Followed Venues
Bookmarks
Search
A focused space for intentional exploration:
Filters
Filters
Categories