Zoom Events: Expo Builder
Enabling organizers to customize Expo, with ease.
Role
Design & Product Strategy Lead
Date
December 2021
Challenge
How can we give the event organizer more agency to customize their Expo? How do we reduce the overhead on event organizers and enable the delegation of tasks? How can we give exhibitors and sponsors more control over their own booths so they can represent themselves accurately?
Solution
An expo management tool and builder that allows event organizers to customize the details of who, what, when, and where. Expo Builder also enables organizers to delegate the booth customization to the booth representatives of exhibitors who will be in the booth during the live event.
The Context
In September 2021, Zoom debuted its own virtual events platform, Zoom Events. One of the flagship experiences was Expo which I lead the end-to-end design. See my work for the Expo GA project for more context.
For the MVP, I worked with product management to narrow down on persona who was going to benefit most from our Expo product—paying sponsors who are looking for lead generation opportunities. Our first version of Expo autogenerated the layout on the backend and pre-determined the expo floor and booth interior layout based on the selected sponsor tier. Each sponsor tier had a corresponding booth size and number of booth spaces allocated to them inside their booth.
This worked for GA, but quickly, customer feedback kept rolling in, stating that they loved Expo, but were excited and wanted even more. They wanted to be able to accurately represent their brand and have more control over the experience they were going to show to attendees.
I designed a ground-up tool that allows event organizers to:
Set expo open & closed times
Manage external exhibitors or sponsors who will be participating in the expo and provisioning their corresponding booths.
Make their own booths to use as a flex space for any purpose (happy hours, networking, speaker lounges, help centers, etc.)
Determine the expo floor layout and where each booth will go
Customize booths or delegate booth customization to co-editors/booth representatives—reducing overhead for the organizer
The Organizer Experience
Expo Builder
While event organizers are in Event Setup, they can opt-in to add an Expo to their event, seeing a description of the value and visuals of the attendee and booth customization experiences.
Once they enter into Expo Builder, they are prompted to import/create booths for existing exhibitors (sponsors & non-sponsors) or create their own flexible, multi-purpose booths.
After adding booths, they are given a preview of what their expo layout will look like. They edit their expo details, manage the placement of host-owned/exhibitor booths, and customize booths.
Booth Customization
Upon clicking on a booth, the event organizer (or delegated booth representative) is taken to the booth customization tool. Here, organizers can see a WYSIWYG configurator that allows them to:
Add/delete elements they want in their booth
Rename booth spaces and set inactive space imagery
Add background images to different parts of the booth, creating affordances for more customization or brand-alignment
Add assets such as videos, images, calls-to-action, downloads, etc.
One thing that customers were constantly asking for was more “brand-ability” and control over image backgrounds and colors. Considering all of the potential scenarios of uploaded assets that could hamper readability and contrast, I opted to allow customizability in elegant doses.
The booth banner acts as the “entryway” into the booth, enabling the person configuring the booth to select from some pre-defined colors or add their own brand color using a color picker. They also have the opportunity to add an image. Confining uploaded vs. the whole background of the booth allows for a reduction in visual clutter, while still meeting the customers’ needs.
Through research and feedback, we found that the configuration of an inherently visual feature like Expo should not be complex or have a high learning curve. I opted for a WYSIWYG-like interface, enabling the clicking of an element that you want to change and being able to edit it and see it update real-time. This reduces the need for another “Preview Mode” and reduces potential disconnects with the attendee-facing experience.
The Attendee Experience
By allowing more customizability of the booths on the organizer side, attendees have more to explore in each booth. Once inside the booth, attendees move around the same as when they were on the expo floor. They are able to see more detail and click through more interactive elements.
Why does this matter?
Expo Builder and the addition of robust booth customization features were exactly what internal and external customers were looking for to take their Expos and events to the next level.
It heavily reduces the load on event organizers, allowing representatives manning the booths to take ownership of the setup.
The introduction of a more flexible Expo Builder allows Zoom Events to scale the Expo framework/product to different customer contexts and needs—more than just sponsor showcases and trade shows.
Some customers had piqued interest in utilizing the Expo for career fairs and science fairs (higher-ed EDU customers), to film festivals and book publishing showcases.
Expo Builder has been a clear differentiator that helps win over customers and provides robust customizability—all wrapped up within the comprehensive Zoom Events platform. This reduces the need for multiple services and products to host a large virtual event.