A Festival Of Future For Food
CSV and USP
The FUTURE Asian Food Festival presents one very unique opportunity to the community of University of Washington and beyond. It aims to provide an enriching experience in the realms of various East Asian cuisines complimented by the most contemporary and futuristics technologies and inventions.
Unlike most other Asian themed food festivals which still embodies traditions and dated standards, the FUTURE food festival aims to be the most innovative, inclusive, and technologically advanced food festival you have ever attended.
Backgrounds
As a university student at a large R1 university, I was surpurised by how little festivals and large-scale gatherings we have on campus. With how stressful school life is and how so many people are feeling bored, I decided to take the challenge of designing and planning something uniquely interesting for all of the students as well as the nearby residents. The goal of this festival is to provide a great culinary and social experience while not causing financial burdens.
Competitors Analysis
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Japan Festival
Pros: Vast Selections of Japanese cuisine, Japanese related merchandises. Multiple Japanese cultural events showcase. Free general admissions with additional paid features.
Cons: Only Japanese cuisine and Japanese related or adjacent products available.
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California Wine Festival
Pros: Multiple locations with multiple sessions held at multiple times in a year. World renowned liquor and top rated chefs. Auxiliary services such as lodging provided.
Cons: Astronomically expensive, hefty general admissions plus extra cost.
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Los Angeles Food Bowl
Pros: Large and festive atmosphere with performance arts, lots of representation from nations all over the world. Reasonable price and large selection of offerings.
Cons: High decibels of noise pollution. Less than satisfactory safety.
Competitive Edge
After analyzing my current top three competitors, I have seemingly found an interesting niche for my FUTURE food festival.
It seems that for the current existing festivals, they either offer too varied of a selection (cuisine from all over the world) or too limited of a selection (cuisine from only a single nation), my FUTURE festival would supplant the missing middle piece: a selection from a part of a continent.
In terms of pricing, they are all exclusively high-end boutique esque facing, or completely common mass facing, what about something that isn’t exorbitantly expensive nor dirt-like cheap?
Promotional Poster
Color Palette
Rationale:
HEX: 3BF581 / 2635FC / F5443B
HEX: F21B02 / F5D33B / 02F276
HEX: 581BD9 / 0F3BFF / 20B4D4
I chose to use a combination of Tetradic color scheme plus monochromatic to emphasize the difference between the hot, dynamic state of the food and the cool, calm, stable, and reliable atmosphere of the organizer. The festive mood shall be represented by light colors composed primarily of RGB.
Festival Symbols
Rationale:
For this project and design, I have chosen to use simple minimalist inspired UI elements. Of course, they all embody the post-modernism touch and bridges our current time into the future. They are simple, easy to read and understand, yet maintain a delicate sense of reserved futurism.
Festival Designs
The two examples at right are two versions of entrance tickets for the second day of the FUTURE food festival event. Tickets come in either in day pass or festival pass, where all days are covered. The two tickets are here are day passes, and since the major nation on display for that day is Korea, both tickets are inspired by classical Korean icons and symbols.
Festival Map
The event festival map was created with careful considerations of its use and purpose. All “irrelevant” information such as minor streets and unused generic buildings were excluded from the map, while useful content such as bus stops, metro station, and parking lots were included and further emphasized. Additionally, main veneues were marked on the map for ease of navigation.
User Flow: Mobile Prototype
This user flow is specific to the process of purchasing one or more admission tickets on the upcoming official mobile application for the festival.
Rationale:
With one of the major theme of this food festival being futuristic, I know that appropriate software services and support is a must. To that end, I have come up with the idea of an official mobile application where all visitors can download prior to their visit, and enjoy digital ticketing, online order, etc simply using their mobile smartphone.
User Research
Conducted through anonymized online submission forms, my potential users survey targed upwards of 50 randomly selected college students, where they are asked to fill out a online form. The resulting data is parsed and visualized with the graphics to the left. Some interesting trends I have seen include:
Most college students are rather frugal and is looking to spend less than 3 digits on a festival.
Chinese / Greater China has the most influence / interest in the world of culinary.
Cost is a very important and critical factors in determining attendance for college aged participants.
Buttons:
My mobile application design will have four major states that affect the visual appearances of an UI element, the static will be the default state, the hover is when user’s cursor hover over an UI element, the focus is when user’s cursor clicked on an UI element before releasing, and active is when user’s cursor clicked on an UI element then releasing afterwards.
Style Tiles & UI Elements
Example UI Palette:
Text Inputs:
For text input bars and entries, I have chose to follow similar style comparable to my buttons design. However, because of the nature of text and their input rows, I have added three additional types of states: Active, Filled, and Error. Each represents the progression in regards to each text input field.
Home Page
Final Iteration:
Home Page
Mockup Usage demo
Wireframes
Culinary Page
Culinary Page
Ticketing Page
Ticketing Page
Initial Rationale
What you are seeing here is the first iteration / version of high-fidelity wireframes for my festival’s official mobile application. I have decided on using purple (581BD9) as the primary font color, content stroke, as well as other graphic elements plus combos. Ticketing page was designed to allow for purchase of all types of tickets.
Final Rationale
The final iteration / version of my mobile application’s wireframes include a few significant changes:
Streamlined color patterns and visual fluidity, non-fitting elements revised & removed.
More visual backgrounds and support. More attractive pages.
UI elements (especially for ticketing page) was entirely revamped to be more human centered and intuitive, utilizing a layered drop down approach.
Mockup Usage demo
Interactive prototype
Additional Information:
Complete Case Study File for this project can be found in the “Files” tab at the top right of the webpage in PDF format.