5Stones Conference Research

I wanted to learn if a more cohesive experience between the booth, video, swag, etc adds value to the target audience’s interaction. Specifically, I wanted to know if the 5Stones narrative thread increased ministry leaders’ understanding of the issue of porn and activated them into fighting that issue in their contexts. 

• Do ministry leaders pick up on the Warrior-Shepherd narrative from the booth elements?
• Do the booth elements create a cohesive story that motivates ministry leaders into action?
• What isn’t yet working about the booth set up (both with specific 5Stones design pieces and as a whole ecosystem)
• Do these designs help us stand out at conferences and attract people to our booth?

To ensure that my research included as much of the full scope of the booth experience as possible, I focused my attention into three main avenues of observation and information gathering:

• Observing interactions at the booth. For this portion of the research, I was seated near the sales team member and observing his interactions with attendees. I was watching for how quickly attendees identified our company's name and purpose, if they noticed and understood the Warrior-Shepherd narrative, and what, if anything, in their conversation with the sales team member caused "lightbulb moments" of excitement or agreement. I also noted any language they used to discuss the severity of the issue of porn and anything they were trying to do to help.
• Observing attendee interactions at other booths. Since this was the first time this company had done onsite research at a conference, I also wanted to learn as much as I could about the competition aka other vendors. I walked the vendor circuit multiple times throughout the conference, observing which booths consistently drew a crowd, what the most frequent color and design choices were, which booths were easy for me to understand their message as I walked by, and which ones made me want to linger.
• Interviews with the sales team member. The sales team member provided invaluable insight throughout the conference about which experiences I was observing were typical and which were anomalies. I also interviewed him throughout the set up and tear down process to understand his jobs, pains, and gains during conference work.

The Hypothesis: We believe that a booth with a cohesive narrative story will catch attendees' attention and bring in more leads via email sign-up as well as create emotional resonance and "mental stickiness" with the ministry leaders we speak with. We are correct if we get over 150 leads and see a majority of attendees having "lightbulb moments" about the severity of porn and their next step to fight it in their church.

The Measurements: 

• What difference do we see in download activity of the recommended resources after the conference, if any?
• How many leads do we get from the conference? 
• What is the ministry leaders’ response to the 5 Stones narrative (positive & negative)?  

The Research Methods: 

• Observational onsite research
• In-person interview of sales team member

Well over 150 people came up to the booth during the four days of the conference. These participants were predominantly in some type of ministry leadership and ranged from senior pastors to volunteer youth leaders. There was a wide range of mid 20s up into 50 and 60s and both men and women came up frequently. 

Finding 1: 5Stones and Covenant Eyes branding competed

• Over half of the attendees who approached the booth thought the company name was 5 Stones. Even after the sales team member had started explaining what we did and had mentioned Covenant Eyes, they still frequently missed that we were not called 5Stones.
• "You're just like that other company....um, Covenant Eyes!" Attendees commented about Covenant Eyes as a different company that was like what we were describing multiple times, despite the Covenant Eyes logo being clearly represented on the booth materials.

Finding 2: The Warrior-Shepherd narrative got lost and wasn't necessary

• Less than 10% of the attendees understood the David and Goliath narrative and even once the concept was explained, there was no sign of increased insight about the idea of fighting porn. It simply did not add value to the conversations and ended up being just another step that the sales team member had to explain in the very limited amount of time each attendee was willing to stand at the booth.
• In contrast, over 80% of attendees enthusiastically affirmed that porn was an issue in the church and that it needed to be dealt with. They didn't need convincing.
• The video commercial, which the narrative concept centered on, was only shown once throughout the conference because of how many vendors there were. The still ads were shown much more frequently but they also lacked the full story's context. This meant that most attendees did not see all the pieces meant to build the narrative resonance.

Finding 3: Bold, clean designs reduce cognitive dissonance

• The most successful booths had clean, high-contrast designs with several bold and interesting colors. They often included graphic elements that added visual interest without adding clutter to the design. They used clear messaging with their company name and taglines directly linked to their main purpose.
• Booths that changed out some aspect of their space each day also were successful. By the fourth day of an event, attendees tended to glaze over the booths they'd already seen. Having something change each day invited people to come back.

The findings suggest that there is have much less time than the design team anticipated to draw people in with booth backdrops. Designers need to use a billboard design strategy for building backdrops - have a clean, highly visible, easily understood message as people are flying by. Other materials can then be used to enhance that booth's main story.

The findings also suggest that our current prototype has too much cognitive dissonance for attendees. The Warrior-Shepherd narrative is nuanced and the symbolism gets lost in the chaos of conferences. This prototype's design style is gritty and textured and that ended up just creating more visual noise instead of communicating a message of strength. 

One positive note from the research was that the new booth and the 5Stones name caught a lot of interest and we saw a much higher turnout than last year's event because attendees wanted to find out what this new booth was about.

Since I had to design this research before attending a conference, there were some limitations with my own assumptions of how things functioned. As the conference progressed, I identified several areas where I could have measured more accurately and thus gotten more reliable data. I incorporated that learning into my research plan retroactively so follow-up research can be more accurate going forward.

I recommended that we repeat the observational research with the same booth at other conferences this year. Especially because so much of what I observed was a pain point that would require extensive changes to an expensive prototype, I recommended we test again to confirm findings.