BigScreen

Intro

Booking Movie Tickets Online is Not Appealing - it takes too much time, you cannot select your seat, and your data may not be safe

While many movie ticket booking applications exist, there seems to be a lot desired from the users. Primarily these concerns can be categorized into four categories:

1. More Features: People are unhappy that the existing movie booking apps do not allow them to get more details about the movie or select their seats. This causes them to hesitate leading to them not booking movies as frequently as they would from these applications.

2. No Different Than Buying them at the Theatre: With the existing mobile ticket apps, they cannot select seats, so they have to stand in line at the theatre to get their desired seats even after booking online .

3. Lack of Privacy: Privacy of user data is important especially in today’s age. Existing apps have many privacy issues and there is a lot of skepticism about payments not being secure.

4. Complex On Boarding Process: Most people don’t want to waste time to sign up for these existing apps. They want to skip the sign up process and directly proceed with buying their tickets as it otherwise in fact takes more time than buying them in-person.

GOAL

How might we improve the current movie ticket booking experience while prioritizing speed and privacy?

Determined to change the above described scenario, I spent the next 2 months independently investigating this space and designing BigScreen - an iOS mobile app that would allow users to book tickets, read critics/user’s movie reviews, select seats and make payments in a fast and secure fashion.

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHT

The First Few Minutes of Using the App Matter
the Most to the User

I focused on front-loading my generative research in the first stage of my design process. I distributed a survey amongst 35 people and interviewed 6 potential users to gain a deep understanding of their goals and frustrations.

Doing this confirmed my observations and made me discover that the audience heavily values user-friendly designs — to the point where they determine whether to keep using an app or not within the first few minutes of the product experience. In addition to this I learned:

1. 67% of participants still use movie ticket booking applications even though the process is not fast.

2. 35% use Fandango, the most popular booking app, to book tickets

3. 25% indicating they use more than one ticket booking application which highlighted the need for an alternative.

4. 45% of participants wanted features like advance booking, notification and secure seat selection.

SYNTHESIZING OUR INSIGHTS

I then synthesized my insights into a person. This would act as reliable and realistic representations of my audience segments that I could refer to while designing thus allowing me to always keep the user in mind.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

In my user research, I learned from users that the existing onboarding process was lengthy. Keen to not make the same mistakes with my solution, I performed a competitive analysis of Fandango, Atom, and AMC. This gave me an opportunity to experience the extensive process first hand and made me realize the direction for the MVP - simplicity.

To have my solution perform well as an MVP, simplicity would need to be adopted, and hence I prioritized ensuring there was a quick and easy onboarding experience.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

To ensure the MVP was within scope, I crafted four user stories to aid the creation process:

1. I want to book movie ticket

2. I want to select seats

3. I want to read critic and user reviews of a movie before booking

4. I want to cancel my ticket

LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMING

With my user stories mapped out, I moved into the next phase of designing the app, starting with some rough sketches. I incorporated the best practices and existing design patterns to ensure the experience was user friendly and then digitized these wireframes for usability testing.