This project aimed to elevate the Vancouver Writers Festival (VWF) experience, transforming it from a passive literary event into a vibrant, community-focused space that fosters genuine connection among attendees.
My Role
As the lead content designer, ethnographic researcher, and primary client liaison, I led user research and synthesis throughout the project. I constantly reassessed the design space to ensure our solutions were grounded in strong rationale, maintaining consistent communication with VWF to ensure that our work aligned with the company’s objectives.
Tools
Figma
Adobe Suite
Teammates
Carmen Law
Julia Robledano
Joseph Lee
Scope
Case Study
12 weeks
Spring 2025
The Conversation Heart Bookmark
The Conversation Heart Bookmark was our final design intervention for VWF - a low-barrier, meaningful medium to encourage conversation between solo attendees during lulls at festival events.
Unfolded
Front
Back
01 Themed Prompt
A prompt to spark event-specific discussion among like-minded solo attendees, preventing patrons from awkwardly searching for conversation topics.
02 Event Highlight
A quotation from the featured author to reflect the event theme and offer an incentive for loyal patrons to collect different event keepsakes.
03 Recommendation Area
This space invites attendees to share a piece of themselves in a thoughtful, personal way, sparking genuine unique conversation beyond the usual icebreaker. A handwritten note leaves a lasting impression, making it more memorable even after the event.
But the connection doesn’t stop at attendees with attendees. The staff recommendation helps foster a stronger sense of community across all of VWF.
04 Sponsored Food Deals
Attendees spend time roaming Granville Island during the writers festival, including snacking and getting meals. A coupon would incentivise solo attendees to explore together, creating unique shared experiences, extending and strengthening connections made at VWF.
05 Folding Instructions
A QR code directs attendees to a full tutorial and makes the folding experience as smooth as possible.
06 Folding Guidelines
Numbered and colour-coded folding guidelines allow for an even more intuitive folding process.
Sparking Conversation, One Heart at a Time
Attendees can fold, personalise, and swap bookmarks while waiting for an event to begin, choosing various aspects of the bookmark as a way to easily connect with like-minded individuals and create a lasting memory of the event. By transforming idle moments into opportunities for engagement, this intervention helps enliven the often quiet, disconnected atmosphere before events, bringing it closer to VWF’s vision of a lively, curiosity-driven literary community enriched by personal connection.
The Design Process
Understanding the Client
Anchored by VWF’s mission “to connect people to exceptional books, ideas and dialogue,” we began our ethnographic research by reviewing reports, event recordings, existing assets, and interviewing VWF staff. I crafted our interview questions and attended two keynote events to observe audience dynamics and communication, later helping translate our findings into four key problem areas:
01 Unclear event communication
02 Lack of engagement between attendees
03 Weak relationships with sponsors and partners
04 Attendee questions left unaddressed
Attending and observing VWF events
Framing Design Opportunities
Building on our ethnographic research, we developed detailed personas and user journeys to ground our design in real attendee needs. These methods helped us identify key design opportunities and avoid one-size-fits-all solutions. I authored the personas and user journeys, crafting relatable goals, frustrations, and emotional touchpoints to guide intentional, user-specific design.
Printed and annotated VWF persona brochures
Elysia - Primary Persona
An aspiring writer seeking creative connection but uncomfortable at events and frustrated by the lack of insights.
Kelsey
A VWF event coordinator stretched thin with never-ending logistical tasks but envisioning a stronger VWF community.
Maurice
A sociable, elderly attendee seeking interaction with people but frustrated by disorganised events and policies.
Concept Ideation and Exploration
Still exploring laterally, we developed three concepts from our personas and potential design spaces I focused heavily on the conversation heart bookmark which would later be refined as our final intervention, intentionally designing each element of the heart to instigate an aspect of interaction.
Reframing
Our initial concepts ignored VWF constraints, lacked grounding in real attendee needs and were shaped by assumptions from simple observations and staff-focused research. We needed to reframe. We realised we overlooked moments such as the awkward pre-event lull which offered a valuable opportunity to support one-to-one interactions. Thus, we refined our design focus:
How might we offer a low-barrier, meaningful medium to encourage conversation between solo attendees during lulls within the theatre?
Gathering New Insights
To gather ethnographic data around our new design focus, I designed and led a participatory workshop exploring attendee goals, behaviours, and emotions during lulls. Using methods like visual card sorting, role-play, semantic zoom, and co-ideation with the rose-thorn-bud method, we aimed to create a space to observe authentic behaviour and prompt genuine reflections.
Visual Card Sort activity at our in-person workshop
Role-play of the pre-event waiting experience
Rose-thorn-bud reflection and co-ideation exercise
We recruited five solo readers and writers for an in-person session, alongside a remote workshop with VWF staff. This dual approach enabled us to triangulate perspectives from all our stakeholders and surface unexpected insights:
01 Timing and space heavily influences the quality of interactions
02 Low-effort activities better encourage natural interaction
03 Food and concession as an unexpected interaction medium
Converging on our Final Intervention
Grounded in real attendee behaviours and goals, this new data helped us confidently refine our design focus, leading to the refinement of The Conversation Heart Bookmark as our final intervention. The initial concept already had a strong foundation for sparking connection, and I shifted our efforts toward intentionally shaping every detail to foster meaningful conversation between solo attendees.
Personal Reflection
Importance of true ethnographic data
At the beginning of this project, we were supposedly doing all the right things to learn about our client and audience but it just wasn’t enough. We had to realise the many assumptions that we had, backtrack, and position ourselves in the space to collect real data and the thoughts and emotions of the people we were designing for.
There is no universal user
This project taught me that there is no such thing as an intervention which would cater to many people and serve multiple needs. There is no elasti-user that would stretch to fit my design. It is our role as designers to adapt around a fixed user’s needs. Designing for a specific, target audience is way more effective and valuable than creating for a universal user.
