We conducted 5 in-depth interviews with VoiceStory community members. Each interview ranged from 35–60 minutes in length and provided us with some fantastic insights. Interviewees ranged from people who attended a live event or workshop to members of the community that had already been a speaker.

Question: Tell us a little bit about your experience with VoiceStory.

"I felt very welcome and didn’t feel singled out which allowed me to be myself. People moved from superficial conversations quickly to deep intimate stories…"

"I originally went because a friend was a speaker at the event and it was a really amazing experience. I then wondered if I could get up there and talk about a story I have."

Question: What makes VoiceStory different than similar organizations?

"Heart-centred — totally different from toastmasters which is a canned performance.You aren’t going to a perfect performance."

"The people that come out are just lovely. It's not going to be stuffy. People just show up and are authentic. And I think that's rare in our world."

Question: What is the reason you attend VoiceStory events or workshops?

"I believe that VoiceStory has kind of helped me get to a place where I’m creating my own dream ventures. Because of the process of becoming a speaker."

"The environment that they put on. You don’t have to put on a false face in any way. Which I thought was really nice."

Question: What has stopped you from attending more?

"I’m a busy person. I like to be busy.It’s really availability."

"If I can go then I most likely will. I don’t research the topic because I well trust that it will be a good event."

Question: Do you have anything suggesting to improve the VoiceStory experience?

"Maybe something to do after the event. I want to remember the messages from the show."

"I feel like they have it down to an art. I did get the dates mixed up for my first event. Maybe make it the dates and locations more clear."

Question: If VoiceStory were to have an app what kinds of features would you like to see?

"The first thing I was thinking of was to have future events. They have a new location now. Definitely a quick place to go find the events and buy tickets from there. I guess it could also have videos."
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"I would like to see it as a resource I suppose. Like where it has all the VoiceStory stuff."

1. Content disorganization, confusion regarding venue details, ticket purchasing issues, as well as wanting to relive the key messages they learned after the event.
   
2. Most users didn’t see the value in an app that could aid in speaking events or workshops.
   
3. Phone were considered a distraction that would limit face-to-face connections.
   
4. All interviewees mentioned that they’re extremely busy and they all live pro-active lifestyles.
   
5. All mentioned that a centralized information hub for all things VoiceStory would be valuable to them.
   

1. Live Q&A was the top requested feature. It was also mentioned 65% of the time in the open-ended questions where we asked for VoiceStory improvements.
   
2. The audience of VoiceStory was much older than we anticipated. In total, 65% of the responses were in the age range of 46–65. This was re-enforced verbally by our client.
   
3. For the most part, users again didn’t seem too interested in an app that would aid them during the actual event. In-event features accounted for a low percentage of overall requested features.
   
4. Users would like to see a feature that allowed them to apply to be a speaker.
   

1. Having easy access to event information was mentioned 70% of the time in the open-ended questions. It was becoming clear that event information would have to be a core function of the app.
   
2. Just like the VoiceStory community survey, the ability to connect with speakers was a highly requested feature. This got us thinking that we could build in a speaker directory that had links to the speakers' social media or email.
   

1. The experience would be next to impossible to replicate via an app, especially for older generations.
2. Audience members seemed incredibly engaged the entire time. Not a single soul left until the end.
3. Lots of families attended the event together and it was a very social event.
4. Older age range with attendees being mostly 50+.

1. Authenticity is very important to the VoiceStory attendees.
   
2. They’re a busy time-strapped bunch.
   
3. They want the ability to purchase tickets via the app.
   
4. Full details of the upcoming events including speaker bios and other relevant event information is a must.
   
5. They want a regular scheduled Q&A with the speakers at each event.
   
6. Easy access to the VoiceStory video library including the ability to filter by theme and date.
   

1. Preparation for Event: Start by providing them with all the necessary information about the upcoming events. This would help relieve any uncertainly surrounding critical information about the event.
   
2. Post-event we see two opportunities. First, we want attendees to be inspired and consider becoming a speaker. Having an easy place to do this would help bridge that gap. Secondly, we want attendees to rewatch the video of speaks so the messages in the stories can resonate with them even after the event has completed. This could be accomplished by providing the latest videos through the app as well as attaching them to the event listings page.
   

Paper Prototypes.

Paper Prototype Usability Testing.

1. 2 of the tester were confused with some of the checkout copy. In particular, they didn’t understand what ‘Ticket Information’ was. Due to this, we changed the copy to ‘Contact Info’. This update appeared to clear up any confusion around the user data we were trying to capture.
   
2. The primary navigation copy was also an area for improvement as there were some uncertainty and inconsistencies in the copy specifically around accessing a purchased ticket. To make it clear where they needed to go to view their ticket(s) we updated the bottom navigation from “Tickets” to ‘My Tickets’ and changed the headline from ‘My Upcoming Event’ to ‘My Tickets’.
   
3. Finally, we had a developer run through the ticket purchase scenario and he mentioned that we would want them to login or signup before continuing through the checkout funnel.
   

1. Identified and fixed areas where the user would get “stuck” in the app. This happened when they would navigate several levels deep into the app.
   
2. Keep it simple was some other feedback we got on the designs. The user specifically mentioned that we spread out the content over too many pages instead of just having everything on the same page (i.e. — All the event and ticket info on the same page).
   
3. Providing more feedback on user actions. For instance, it was unclear that the user had favourited a video because the primary indicator was lower down the page. To fix this we pushed it further up on the page. This would have only come to our attention if we ran our usability tests on a phone.
   

“Writing and preparing a story is something I don’t consider for a phone… maybe something that helps people with last minute prep so they can use their phone before going up to give a presentation…”
— Storytelling Coach & attendee at The Flame

1. Time management is critical: Compared to other groups doing other community projects, we had fewer team members and overall less experience among the group. This made time management essential. It seemed like we were always slightly behind compared to other groups and we had to make this up by working harder. I would have liked us to work a bit smarter and manage and set concrete deadlines.
   
2. Design for the user: I am continuously surprised by how users accomplish tasks within an app or website. When you’re deep into a project, biases can emerge about how things should work, however, you always have to refer back to the user. Ultimately, a designer’s opinion of how an app should work should mean nothing.
   
3. Bring testing in sooner: Due to the aggressive nature of the project deadlines, it was difficult to make time for user testing throughout the entire process. The deadlines caused us to only do this near the end of the project which affected the final outcome and created some setbacks.