Kara Kata Afrobeat Society

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Kara-Kata Afrobeat Society of Canada is a multicultural/ multi-ethnic group compromising African, Caucasian musicians, and artistic dancers/ performers. The purpose of the society is to create a vibrant and sustainable musical and dance culture informed by the afrobeat tradition. To reach all and diverse audiences that reflect the multicultural mosaic of Canada, Irrespective of race /ethnicity, gender, sexuality/ sexual orientation, religion, class or ability/ disability.

Our Team

UX: Juan Pablo Torres, Maria Alejandra Nava, Lia Oranit Shechte

UI: Deepjyoti Goswami, Nathan Vieites

Business Goals

The website will bring information about Kara Kata’s program offerings, How they can support community members, how they can get involved with them and hopefully build community and also provide information for funders or investors who may be interested in contributing financially to assist the society.

Educating the African Canadian community on sustainable farming that can be shared locally and in Africa. Kara-Kata afrobeat Band is unique to the city, multicultural, diverse, community, and family-based. They one of a kind. When the society acquires the farm located in the Fraser Valle, They will implement their nature and farming programs and also provide a place for people to come out of the city to a peaceful place.

People can retreat, enjoy the land, yoga, meditation, peace and rest. get inspired and have everything provided on the farm. They can eat food grown on the farm in an organic and sustainable way.

Project Goal

To have a professional website outline created with a user-friendly design. where users will be able to find information about the farm, retreat, education programing. giving a space for the community interested in getting back to nature, having the opportunity to learn about farming and the African culture. Also, to create awareness about the Afrobeat band and get people more gig bookings to spread the joy of Afrobeat and the culture.

Survey

For more understanding of how to approach the project, we conducted a survey with potential users and we got interesting results

General Information

The first result we got from the survey was the age of the people interested in African culture. It had been difficult because as a group we thought that the range of age would be wider. However, the range was started from 35 to 40 years old.

On the other hand, 35% of our audience are men, and 52% are women. all these people are really excited about the afrobeat music hand in many cases they have had the opportunity to be part of some African music concerts. Also, some of them are musicians and have been exploring different sounds from other cultures. Learning how to play African instruments such as the speaking drums, or playing music with their own bands.

Are you familiar with the African culture?

We discovered that even if they were not familiar with the band or the music, In many cases they had tried African food, or somehow they were involved with the African culture. In the same way, they are open to listen Kara Kata music and be part of it.

Farming

One of the projects for the future of Kara Kara is the retreat village. That why we considered it important to ask people about their availability to go to the farm and spend a good time there. At the farm, people could learn about the process of growing food, take yoga classes, learn music, and forgot about the stress of the city. Only 23% of people is not interested in the farming experience. but 35% of them have farming experience. On the other hand, 41% are curious about the learning process.

In the survey, we asked people about the services they would expect to find in a farm retreat. most of them want to learn how to grow food because they consider that it is a good wat to start growing their own food and having a healthy diet.

Other people only want to go there and spend some time relaxing alone or with their families expending time surrounded by nature, taking yoga classes, some workshops, etc.

Making list activities was very helpful fur us to understand the audience because at this point in the process we really understood what they expected from the new Kara Kata website. a place where the will be able to find music, learn about the culture, the food, check the list of the concert and book a room on the farm where they can relax during the weekend.

Retreat Trip

Our audience was really interested in taking a retreat in nature at least once a year. Only 35% of the people could afford it 3 times during the year. more than 90% of them consider it as a great idea to get off the city and learn something new.

Domain Research

Now, that we know a bit more about our potential user, we want to see what similar businesses have to offer on their website.

Competitive landscape

Abundance Community Farm

This community has been working to create an experience of work and sharing with people in a farm, including music, meditations classes, among others. They also have a website where they offer people different services, but we considered that their web site does not have effective navigation, organizational clarity, clear labeling, effective visual design, supporting readability, help, and support.

Stowel Lake Farm

Stowel Lake Farm has a good website, with interesting transitions among contents. they have also considered putting the information with hierarchy, which allows them to have categories and subcategories to make it more understandable for users.

Bliss Farm & Retreat

Bliss Farm also counts with a good design website providing excellent content and services to people. sometimes we feel that they could improve the navigability of the site though.

Rolling Earth Farm Retreat

This Farm Have an interesting perspective of farming and how to share with people their passion with people, but at the same time, we consider that is not a good referent in terms of design to get inspiration from this website.

Interviews

And more than that, we wanted to meet the users and ask them questions about their behavior. It helped us to see what we should focus on.

Gut Test

We did a 20 Second Gut Test with the Client to create our initial visual design direction. It helped us identify general design aesthetics.

Affinity Diagram

We looked for the keywords from the survey, the interviews, and the research, and try to find a common denominator.

We categorized them into groups. It helped us to understand what focus on.

Persona

To create the best design for our users, we need to be able to know him. How old is he? What does he like? and why.

We develop empathy for him, understand his problems and try to solve them via design.

Journey Map

Now, that we know Mila, let’s see how and when she met Kara Kata

User flow

To understand the navigability of Kara Kata, We came up with all the categories that should be on the land page and the submenus of each Category.

Information Architecture

On the first level, users will find the Kara Kata Afrobeat Society overview which includes pictures, information about the community and their project.

For the second level, we chose the most relevant categories such as the music page, African retreat page, the events page, and the contact page.

Then on the third level are the subcategories from afrobeat village retreat page.

Finally, on the fourth level, users could find the other two submenus from Kara Kata Kitchen.

mood board

We arranged a group of images, materials, pieces of text, etc. intended to evoke a particular style for our design.

Logo Variations

For logo variations, the UI team did a rigorous process of selection to get the final logo for Kara Kata Afrobeat Music

Kara Kara logo represents the idea the community values.

Mid-Fi Wireframes

Designing the mid-fidelity wireframes, we did a page for every category with all the information. So users could scroll down or click over each component to get there quickly.

Also is really important to say that the music page has actual music of Kara kata band and people are allowed to listen, download, and keep browsing while the music is still paying.