Picnic Pal — A UX Case Study

Introduction

Picnic Pal is YOUR guide to the best Picnic Day ever. During our 6 week design sprint as a part of Design Interactive’s Spring 2025 Cohort, our team used a human-centered design approach to create a platform for Picnic Day goers to easily plan their day, find new events, access important information, locate key landmarks, and even coordinate with friends. Our application streamlines many of the processes that give Picnic Day goers headaches, allowing people to explore Picnic Day with ease.

Awarded: Best Overall

Problem Statement

Our Team

Timeline

Research

Going into this project, we were primarily motivated by the question of how we could improve upon our intended user base’s existing experience with Picnic Day. To work towards our goal, we first needed to understand what exactly this experience was like, in addition to understanding what frustrations, desires, and needs existed in our intended user base.

Surveys and User Interviews:

To learn more about our audience, we began our research with surveys to get a better look at the big picture. We determined our target audience to be UC Davis students since the event is held on campus and most respondents identified themselves within this category. With this, we had a better understanding of what to prioritize and could get more information on how to make Picnic Day information easy to access. We then proceeded with user interviews to get some more fine grained feedback on people’s Picnic Day experience.

Some further research questions we wanted to answer were:

• How do users plan their Picnic Day?
• What are some frustrations users had on the information given on Picnic Day?
• What features users may be interested in to learn more about Picnic Day events?

Survey Results:

From our survey responses, we found out that:

• 41.9% of respondents learn about Picnic Day through word of mouth (followed by the Picnic Day site at 35.5%)
• 67.7% of respondents mainly plan Picnic day with friends

In terms of frustrations users had, both user interviews and survey data suggested that Picnic Day information is hard to navigate, both online and on printed schedules.

Respondents also reported that it was often hard to:

• Find key landmarks
• Anticipate wait times
• Access ticketed events

Several key features respondents suggested they would be interested included:

• An interactive map
• A live and upcoming event feed
• Real-time wait information

Suggested Features Results:

From our surveys and interviews, we generally found that most pain points centered around existing dense and confusing information systems. This motivated our move towards a platform that primarily centralized and streamlined existing Picnic Day infrastructure.

Competitive Analysis & Usability Audit:

We completed a competitive analysis of 3 apps: Disneyland, Six Flags, and Festival Dust to see what the market has to offer in terms of similar features and processes that could be implemented in our application. We also added a usability audit of the current Picnic Day site to see if there are certain features that weren’t well executed to consider what our app can improve upon.

Competitive Analysis:

With our competitive analysis, we noticed many of the features suggested during our surveys and interviews were included in our selected applications. These competing applications implemented features that allowed for users to easily sync their ticketing and scheduling information with their account, in addition to quickly finding events whether it be through a map or a dedicated scheduling page. We had also seen wait time features be successfully implemented through both the Disneyland and Six Flags app. While the contexts differed, we saw the potential for similar components to make a big difference in our product.

Usability Audit:

In terms of the existing Picnic Day website, we discovered a lot of issues with the organization of information and general ease of access. We did find some positives in the platform, which included a map feature and mostly loose attempts at organization. However, through our own analysis and through feedback from our interviews, we concluded these attempts were generally ineffective and needed improvement.

Ideation

After our research concluded, we had a ton of ideas for our app in mind. Many of our ideas stemmed from the themes we found through our user research:

• Organization: Scheduling, Ticketing, Interactive Map, + More
• Exploration: Social Feed, Profile Creation, Explore Page, + More
• Convenience: Alerts, Routing, Wait Times, + More

Brainstorm:

Looking at our ideas, we organized our thoughts into a feature that focused on user value and our ability to implement the respective feature.

Feature Matrix:

We determined our core pages would be:

1. Home: A central hub where users can branch off and work towards their Picnic Day goals.
2. Discover: A place for users to look at events from a glance and find activities for them.
3. Map: A way for users to easily navigate to desired locations and find what they need.
4. Schedule: A mode of organization that allows users to easily look at and edit their day.
5. Tickets: A convenient, centralized spot for users to access events at their fingertips.

We also decided to continue forward with implementing some of the other features we had mentioned, including wait times and alerts.

With our basic set up decided, we made a simple user flow to outline intended general use and also created some sketches to get an idea of the look and feel of our platform.

User Flow:

Sketches:

With our sketches we came up with a general, consistent card format for organization and had begun to realize what filtering, mapping, and scheduling might look like. We moved forward with this design organization and produced some low fidelity mock ups in Figma.

Lo-Fidelity:

Mid-fi Prototyping

While the low-fidelity prototype helped us establish core user flows, the mid-fidelity phase allowed us to refine layout, usability, and interaction patterns. We focused on improving four key screens: Home, Discover, Map, and Tickets.

Home Screen

The original Home screen contained too many competing elements, making it difficult for users to focus on what mattered most. To improve clarity and prioritize content:

• Notifications were moved to the top navigation bar to reduce visual clutter.
• Spotlight events were redesigned using larger cards and more spacing to draw users’ attention and highlight key attractions.
• A guest list preview was added to event cards, to push forward the social aspect of Picnic Day and help users quickly see which events their friends were attending.

Explore Page

In the lo-fi version, the Explore page presented events as a single list, which made discovery feel disengaging. To increase engagement and support different types of browsing:

• We introduced event categories such as Most Popular, Free Events, and Ticketed Events to help users quickly filter based on their interests.
• Events were organized into horizontally scrollable sections, creating cohesiveness and making exploration feel more personalized.

Map Page

User feedback from the low-fidelity prototype indicated that the map was visually cluttered and difficult to use. To address this:

• We simplified the filter bar so users could easily toggle between booth types (e.g., food, merchandise, water stations).
• We replaced generic pins with more intuitive map icons.

Tickets Page

The ticketing interface needed to be a quick reference during the event. To improve this:

• We implemented a structured information hierarchy, placing essential details, such as event name, time, and location, at the top, followed by the ticket QR code and any additional details.
• The layout was optimized for quick scanning, as we knew that users would often be referencing this screen while on the move.

Usability Testing

To evaluate the usability of our mid-fidelity prototype, we conducted a round of user testing with UC Davis students planning to attend Picnic Day. Each participant was asked to complete three tasks:

1. Add an event to their personal schedule
2. Add a ticketed event and locate it in the Tickets tab
3. Use the map to find the nearest water station

These tasks reflected typical scenarios users would likely encounter during the event, and were designed to test our user flows, visual clarity, and information hierarchy.

Key Findings

1. Content Density

Participants reported that event pages felt visually overwhelming and difficult to scan. Key details were lost in the information, and users struggled to know where to look first.

• To combat this, we prioritized layout simplification in the next iteration by increasing white space, reducing nonessential copy, and visually separating content into digestible sections.

2. Misleading Components

Elements like wait-time bars and event tags were often mistaken for interactive buttons due to their visual styling. This led users to tap on them expecting a response, which disrupted the experience.

• To combat this, we clarified visual affordances by adjusting the styling of non-interactive components and ensuring tappable elements followed consistent design patterns across the app.

3. Lack of Feedback

Participants were often unsure if their actions — such as adding an event to their schedule — had gone through. The lack of visual or behavioral feedback led to hesitation and repeated attempts.

• To combat this, we incorporated clear confirmation indicators (e.g., toast notifications, checkmarks, or subtle animations) to provide immediate feedback after key actions.

Design System

For the Picnic Pal app, we started with UC Davis’s traditional dark blue and gold color palette but later shifted to a more independent and playful design language inspired by this year’s Picnic Day logo. This transition allowed the app to better reflect the festive, family-friendly spirit of the event.

We introduced a vibrant color palette with soft pastels and warm tones to bring energy and clarity to each event category, while rounded cards and clean iconography kept the UI approachable and easy to navigate. All icons were chosen for simplicity and readability, ensuring accessibility across all pages. We used Lexend as our primary typeface, not only for its high readability, but also for its friendly letterforms that support the lighthearted tone.

To further reinforce the playful theme, we added a cheerful cow mascot named Pal, that brings personality to the interface. Overall, the design system is fun, functional, and reflects the joyful atmosphere of Picnic Day.

Hi-fi Prototyping

The high-fidelity prototyping phase built directly on the structure and flow established during the mid-fidelity stage, but now incorporated the full visual language defined in our updated design system. This included applying the finalized color palette, Lexend typography, button styles, icons, and imagery across all screens. Elements like rounded cards, event category colors, and clean iconography helped bring the app to life with a more polished and cohesive look. The updated visuals not only made the app feel more complete but also aligned closely with the playful, community-focused tone of Picnic Day. Check them out!

Prototype Demo:

→ Link to prototype

Presentation Day

At the end of the 6 week design sprint, we presented to a panel of 3 judges in addition to a crowd of all of our friends at Design Interactive and more. We had worked hard on our presentation and our prototype, and despite being nervous to present first, we were also excited to share what we had spent so much time on.

During the presentation, we had gotten some truly insightful and helpful feedback from our judge, Daniel Amara, VP of UX Design at Movano Inc. Though we received some constructive criticisms for our design, including some flaws in our general accessibility and questions concerning our concept, we were commended for the quality of our project. We are incredibly grateful to have been awarded Best Overall at the end of the night and for the time our mentor Danielle Koay, the judges, and the DI board had put into our project.

Challenges

1. Generating Comprehensive User Research: Expanding and ensuring our responses were representative of our entire intended user base and accounted for most (if not all) possible user needs.
2. Maintaining Consistency Across Pages: Working together to ensure our designs were cohesive despite each member taking on their own distinctive page and part of the project.
3. Creating A Design System: Difficult to come up with a visual brand identity that differed from the existing institution when creating a platform for Picnic Day.

Key Takeaways

We learned how important it was to rely upon research findings and functionality needs in our designs. Those insights and reminders are what drove our product’s success. We also discovered more effective ways to use color and visual branding throughout our designs as a result of our struggles with it during the sprint. And most importantly, we learned time and time again that consistency and teamwork is key!

Next Steps

We would like to improve some of the accessibility features, including making the text sizing and formatting more readable for all users. We would also like to go through some more user testing with our final product to ensure our app may be usable for actual launch.