CASE STUDY
ARKO
Designing a Playful Onboarding Process for a Unique Social Club
PROJECT OVERVIEW
We created a service design blueprint to map out the systems and interactions that would deliver ARKO's onboarding experience—on and off the screen.
The Company
ARKO is a social club seeking to create a space where authentic community can emerge. It does this by crafting interactive experiences and adventures that cultivate deep connection, unleash creative super powers, and drive next-level learning through creative play.
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When we began the project, ARKO was in start-up mode, envisioning the first events it would pilot.
The Goal
The goal was to design an onboarding process that brought attendees into the ARKO community.
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This meant we needed to consider the user's journey beyond the events themselves—including how visitors hear about ARKO, sign up for events, as well as what happens before and after events.
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The process needed to feel like ARKO—playful and fun—instead of event sign-ups-as-usual.
The Solution
ARKO hadn’t yet designed or piloted its events, which were the heart of its experience, so we knew there would be some limits to how detailed we could get with onboarding concepts.
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We would be considering digital and physical touch points along the user's journey through the on boarding process.
PROJECT INFO
Pro Bono Client Project
Team
Jonathan Pon, Alex Kammer, Isaac Park
My Key Contributions
Led service design blueprint development, concept designs for Token, workshop facilitation, project management / Participated in user research and synthesis
Methods Used
User Surveys, Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Affinity Mapping, Personas, User Flow Diagramming, Sketching, Usability Testing, Prototyping
Tools
Whiteboard, Sketch, Invision, Photoshop
Timeline
3 weeks research, concept & design
RESEARCH
USER SURVEYS / COMPETITIVE & COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS / AFFINITY MAPPING / PERSONAS / USER FLOW DIAGRAMMING
Starting with Empathy & Clear Understanding
We reviewed our client’s initial research, to identify user and market insights we could build on. They had conducted a Competitive & Comparative Analysis, a User Survey, and built 2 proto personas.
Clarifying "Immersive"
We built on the client's Competitive & Comparative Analysis, looking specifically at competitors' onboarding processes. Membership and exclusivity emerged as a big factor shaping their application/onboarding processes.
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To further understand the uniqueness of ARKO in the midst of other immersive events and social clubs, we wanted to visualize how they related or differed. We mapped them on a scale of exclusivity to openness, and then from curated to co-created content/events.
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We also took note that what kind and how much information they provided to potential attendees had a lot to do with how exclusive they were. Sometimes this seemed to be an intentional choice to generate a "mystique factor.
Focusing on Non-members
We explored how membership and exclusivity might shape the ARKO experience and therefore the onboarding process.
We concluded that ARKO might be suited well to a membership model—with non-members being able to attend. This middle-road approach could allow ARKO to make space for those who would be drawn to membership and those who just want to try an ARKO experience without further obligation.
Additionally, non-members trying out ARKO for the first time, might later become future members.
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Because ARKO hadn't yet piloted an event and had no membership to speak of, we decided to focus on general onboarding of non-members to ARKO events.
People Are Looking for Connections
We studied the client’s User Survey. The main takeaway from the research was that people often found it difficult to make new connections, especially in times of transition, like moving to a new city.
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The client's Proto Personas were built around the idea that self-discovery and self-growth can be the catalyst for community.
Defining ARKO's Values
After digesting the data, we decided to clarify the values driving the ARKO brand in order to get a clearer picture about what we would be designing for when it came time to create the onboarding process.
Values of the Brand
To clarify how the values of the brand might translate into our on boarding process, I led a design workshop with ARKO's founder, to define ARKO's Values:
Play + Magic + Adventure + Learning + Story-telling
Ingredients of ARKO Magic
Because ARKO's events hadn't yet been piloted, we didn't have direct experiences to work off of. So we affinity mapped transformative group experiences and affinity mapped the common trends. We analyzed what we observed making the experiences possible. We distilled them into ARKO's "ingredients"—things that enable its events to work.
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Simple ground rules
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Boundaries (to create safety)
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Confidentiality
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Small voluntary risks
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Activations (taking action)
Finding User Needs & Pain Points
We designed a user survey to dig into how people learned about immersive events, why they attended them, and what they experienced there. We wanted to get attendees' point of view to inform the way we designed the on boarding process.
Revisiting Our Persona
We synthesized our survey results and formed a more detailed persona, focusing on clarified goals, frustrations, and highlights from actual experiences at immersive events.
Onboarding Insights
We conducted a couple task analyses of onboarding processes to see what pain points users encountered, to inform our onboarding design.
We also drew from a competitive & comparative analysis focusing on onboarding processes of competitors of ARKO​.
Using a "donate" instead of "pay" function for events potentially confused people.
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Ability to skip non-essential steps in the sign-up process was important to users.
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What kind and how much information provided was related to how exclusive the group. Withholding information was a deliberate choice to built mystique.
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Most sign-ups are pretty boring affairs
Key Research Takeaways
After synthesizing our and our client's research findings, we arrived at the following insights to guide our service design blueprint.
Word of Mouth
People mainly discover immersive events through word-of-mouth, usually through friends. How might ARKO leverage this to help spread the word?
People Need Context
Amount and quality of information is a big factor when people are trying to gauge whether or not they will enjoy an event. Could ARKO provide people with enough info while maintaining a playfully enigmatic quality to its communications?
Flexible Process
People appreciate being able to skip certain steps in the process, depending on what their specific goal or preference might be. How might ARKO design this into the on boarding process?
Make It Fun
Other platforms treat event sign-ups more like transactions than something fun. Could ARKO do something different?
DESIGN
SKETCHING / USABILITY TESTING / PROTOTYPING / SERVICE BLUEPRINT / CONCEPT MOCKUPS
Building the Service Design Blueprint
I took our basic onboarding user flow and began to define touch points and their associated front stage and back-stage activities. The blueprint would need to to indicate the creative ideas as well as technical systems supporting the on boarding experience.
Landing on a Good Format
We knew the basics of what would go into our service blueprint but we wanted to leverage other existing service blueprints to see the data points and connections their specific designs excelled at highlighting.
Capturing the Main Components of the Blueprint
I mapped out main user actions and corresponding ARKO activity and systems required to deliver the ARKO onboarding experience.
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This provided discussion for us and for the client to begin visualize how the onboarding would work.
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I then created a version in Sketch and traced out system interactions.
Impactful Moments
Once I had a framework in place, I highlighted some important moments in the user’s journey. These represented opportunities to embody the values of ARKO in a memorable way to users.
Tracing "Firsts"
There were a few firsts, we wanted to highlight as special opportunity to create magic for the users.
These included the first time ARKO visitors heard about ARKO from a friend. The first time they landed on the ARKO site. And the most important moment—the first time they actually show up to an event.
Playful Language
We spotted opportunities to transform mundane functions into opportunities to engage visitors and convey the ARKO spirit.
Physical Tokens
To go a step further in integrating physical touch points into the mix, we explored the option of the using a physical token as part of the onboarding process.
Tangible Symbol of Human Connection
I wanted to create a physical symbol of belonging to use in the ARKO onboarding process. A token could be a simple way to make connections between people more tangible. A friend could give it to friend as part of an invitation to try ARKO. That friend in turn, could pass it on to another friend...
Exploring a Playful Sign-up Process
Though it wasn’t a specific deliverable of our project, we tested out a more balanced approach to the need for information with a more playful delivery of info.
RETROSPECTIVE
Key Lessons / Things to Improve / Going Further
Key Lessons
It always pays to spend the time upfront to gain clarity on your problem space before jumping into design.
Things to Improve
The time didn't work out, but I would have liked to attend an immersive event as a contextual inquiry.
Going Further
Plan & Pilot event if we had more time.
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Further explore questions about how people form friendships in the modern, urbanized age.