Challenges & Strategies

Today at Apple is a program by Apple that promotes human connection, learning, and creativity. It offers customers a convenient way to explore new products and services, participate in workshops, and interact with experts. In-store sessions foster community and hands-on learning.

To achieve these goals, Apple wanted to provide customers with a simple and effective way to include additional attendees when booking sessions. This was important because user testing revealed that family-oriented sessions had the highest attendance rate, but capturing both adult attendees and children posed a challenge. To address this, the registration process for the sessions involved two distinct flows, one for users with an Apple ID and another for those without.

To add an unobtrusive step to include additional attendees without causing minimal disruption, the request for additional attendees was presented after completing all other steps. Legal disclaimers were displayed in a clear manner that ensured users read and agreed before signing up. The optimal approach for the registration flow without an Apple ID was to simply add a form field to include guests, while for the Apple ID flow on the web and the Apple Store app, the option was displayed on a modal after the legal disclaimer.

However with COVID-19, Apple stores shut down worldwide, so virtual sessions were introduced. The biggest design challenge for virtual sessions was to differentiate between online and in-store sessions without disrupting the information hierarchy. The design had to be consistent throughout all pages and flows and was pressure-tested against different edge case scenarios.

The design required pressure testing against different edge cases, resulting in a minimal design treatment to distinguish online sessions. Throughout the design process, collaboration with producers, BAs, engineers, and design systems team was critical to solve every possible flow and scenario to come up with a sustainable design that prevents human errors. The end result is a program that continues to promote human connection, inspire learning, and unlock creativity both in-store and online, offering users the opportunity to participate in the Today at Apple experience wherever they are in the world.