Case Study — Event & Entertainment

World Fair US

A Global Village-style cultural festival built for Chicago from zero infrastructure — ticketing, vendor tools, and an admin dashboard designed to make 50+ nations feel like one welcoming digital front door.

RoleDigital Experience Designer

Timeline2023

Team3 collaborators — event operations

ToolsFigma, FigJam, Maze, Illustrator, Photoshop, Jira, Microsoft Clarity

Of tickets sold online within the first 60 days

Unique visitors in the first 3 months

$0K

In pre-event online sales

1:12 → 3:47

Average session duration increase

Overview

Building the digital front door from zero

World Fair US is a large-scale cultural festival inspired by Global Village Dubai, transforming SeatGeek Stadium in Chicago into a hub of cultural exchange — performances, cuisine, and pavilions from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. As Digital Experience Designer, I built the entire digital presence from the ground up: discovery, tickets, planning, and pavilions for visitors — plus the tools administrators and vendors needed to run it.

Empathize

Understand a market that had never seen this event before.

Define

Frame personas and business goals across three roles.

Ideate

Co-create the IA with the event team, not alone.

Prototype

Build a multicultural, high-fidelity visual system.

Test

Validate with real visitors and iterate fast.

Challenge

No existing infrastructure

Ticketing, scheduling, and vendor registration had to be built from scratch.

Challenge

Cultural & visual diversity

The brand needed a digital identity that could resonate with 50+ national backgrounds.

Challenge

Trust as a new event

As a first-year U.S. event, the site had to instantly communicate legitimacy and ease of access.

Challenge

Operational complexity

The organizing team needed real-time access to visitor data, ticket sales, and event management tools.

Empathize

Mixed-method research across visitors, vendors, and organizers from both Global Village Dubai and Chicago's international event community.

Interviews

12 in-depth interviews

With visitors and vendors — cultural expectations and buying behavior.

Surveys

6 online surveys

Gathering preferences on ticket booking, language, and mobile use.

63%

Details were hard to find

Users failed on their first attempt to locate event details and show timings.

→

Vendors wanted visibility

They cited manual, repetitive registration steps and a lack of confirmation visibility.

→

Organizers needed real-time data

Live dashboards to monitor crowd capacity and sales, not end-of-day reports.

UX process diagram — UX process / approach

Define

Three roles, three sets of needs — a single platform had to work for all of them at once.

Persona

The Family Explorer

Wants a single source for tickets, parking, and kids' activities.

Persona

The Vendor Entrepreneur

Seeks quick approval, booth visibility, and digital sales tracking.

Persona

The Operations Manager

Requires live metrics to manage venue flow and daily reports.

Business goals, set with stakeholders

+40% online ticket adoption · −60% vendor onboarding time · under 3 minutes average ticket checkout

Ideate

A design-thinking workshop with the event team turned three personas into one shared information architecture spanning discovery, attendance, and operations.

Discover

Pavilions, calendar, live shows

Where visitors explore what's happening.

Attend

Tickets, parking, visitor guide

Where visitors plan and act.

Manage

Vendor portal, admin dashboard

Where the operations team runs the event.

Prototype

High-fidelity Figma prototypes built to feel like the event itself — bold hero imagery, a color system drawn from international flags, and interaction design that turned exploration into a game.

World Map — "Experience the World in One Place"

Approach

Map-based visualization reinforcing global discovery

Detail

Minimalist illustration with guided navigation, consistent spatial orientation across continents

"Get Your Passport" Gamification

Approach

Digital "stamps" collected for each pavilion visited

Detail

Travel metaphors that build emotional connection and repeat engagement

Ticketing & Pavilions

Approach

3-step ticket flow — Select, Review, Pay — with QR mobile-wallet tickets

Detail

Flag-grid pavilion cards and a country detail page balancing storytelling with clean information

"Share Your Moments" Social Wall

Approach

Live gallery pulling user-generated content under #WorldFairUS

Detail

Mosaic grid, minimal captioning — focus stays on community, not chrome

"Concerts & Shows" Carousel

Approach

Horizontal carousel with bold event imagery and color-blocked edges

Detail

Progressive disclosure — one event highlighted at a time, secondary items still reachable

Country Detail Page (Turkey Pavilion)

Approach

Split layout balancing cultural storytelling with structured product categorization

Detail

Authentic imagery paired with clean typographic hierarchy for immersion and clarity

Test

Remote usability sessions and A/B testing on the ticketing flow and homepage hero, with 20 users — 12 U.S. locals, 8 Middle Eastern tourists.

Top-nav success (12 → 8 items)

64%→93%

Ticket purchase time (5 → 3 steps)

3:20→1:50

"Buy Tickets" CTR, above the fold

+38%

Reflection

What this project reinforced

Designing for 50+ national backgrounds in one interface meant the color and imagery system had to carry meaning, not just decoration — gold, red, blue, and emerald each earned their place. And building trust for a first-year U.S. event came down to the same fundamentals as anywhere else: fewer steps, clearer navigation, and CTAs that don't make people hunt for them.