Scouting the Guest Experience with State Farm Arena & Atlanta Hawks

Insights on live event pain points, user journeys, and in-app enhancements at State Farm Arena.

Project Date: Summer 2025

Role: While each section of this project was a collaborative effort, I took the lead on planning, organizing, and designing the persona profiles and journey maps.

Project Overview: This project served as a replacement for The One Project in our course and focused on understanding and improving the guest experience at large venues through research and user-centered design. Our group conducted comparative research on top venues, developed two unique personas, mapped out detailed user journeys, and proposed a concept sketch for a mobile app feature.

The Problem: Large event venues often overlook small friction points like long concession lines, confusing navigation, rideshare chaos, and hard-to-access information. At a large venue like State Farm Arena, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Guest needs vary widely, from a college student seeking an affordable concert experience to a single dad trying to create meaningful memories with his kids. Our challenge was to study what other large venues get right (and wrong), identify common guest frustrations, and discover opportunities to create more seamless and user-friendly experiences at State Farm Arena.

“Why Guest Experience Matters”, from our Comparative Research Brief

The Solution: We began by developing a comparative research brief that analyzed guest experience strategies at three venues: Disney, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Madison Square Garden. Each venue was intentionally selected: Disney for its renowned customer service and immersive design, Mercedes-Benz for its local relevance and cutting-edge technology, and Madison Square Garden for its multi-purpose event offerings that closely mirror those of State Farm Arena.

“Top Venues”, from our Comparative Research Brief

Across these venues, several consistent themes emerged:

• Technology Usage: From Disney’s MagicBands to Mercedes-Benz’s AI-driven entry screening, all three venues emphasized the use of tech to streamline the guest experience.
• User-Focused Design: Each venue prioritizes guest needs, whether through smart signage, quick issue resolution, or mobile food ordering.
• Brand Consistency & Immersion: Disney, in particular, stood out for its storytelling across every touchpoint, creating a fully immersive experience from start to finish.

“Disney’s Key Takeaways”, from our Comparative Research Brief

Building on those insights, we created two fictional but realistic personas to represent different audience segments at State Farm Arena:

• College Catie, a 21-year-old concert-goer who prioritizes social connection and budget-friendly fun
• Single Dad Sam, a 39-year-old parent looking for a smooth, stress-free night with his kids

User Personas, Catie & Sam

Although they’re experiencing the same venue, their goals and frustrations are very different. Catie is focused on maximizing fun while minimizing cost, whereas Sam is concerned with logistics like parking, safety, long concession lines, and keeping his kids entertained.

We created detailed journey maps that tracked these personas’ thoughts, feelings, and actions across five phases: pre-arrival, arrival, the main event, departure, and post-event. We identified common friction points such as:

• Long food and merchandise lines
• Rideshare congestion and exit delays
• Difficulty navigating to seats

User Journey Maps

From these pain points, we brainstormed potential solutions, including:

• Pre-purchase options for food/merch to reduce lines
• Interactive arena maps to simplify navigation
• A mobile setting to track bathroom or food breaks with game updates

To bring one of these solutions to life, we created a concept sketch of a mobile ordering feature within the arena’s app. The feature allows guests to filter food options by arena level, place an order in advance, and scan a code for quick pickup, which helps reduce wait times and crowd frustration.

Concept Sketch for Mobile Ordering Feature

Results: This project was a fun introduction to the year ahead working with State Farm Arena and the Atlanta Hawks. It was exciting to analyze a physical environment through a digital lens and think critically about how small improvements could make a big impact. Our final personas and journey maps created entertaining group discussions around the diversity of State Farm Arena guests, and brainstorming our concept sketch helped us envision how user-centered design could lead to practical, real-world solutions. I’m proud of how we balanced creativity with realism. Moving forward, I’d love deeper insight into the specific challenges the State Farm Arena team is looking to address so that we can tailor our ideas toward even more meaningful and targeted solutions.