CrowdEngage

Integrated ticketing system that provides an enhanced theatre experience.

  • Project: Client

  • Team: Group

  • Duration: 2.5 week sprint on the General Assembly Immersive course

  • Date:  Febr, 2019

my role

  1. To manage interviews with competitors on Site Visit

  2. To test the existing app

  3. To conduct user interviews

  4. To create personas

  5. To lead ideation session in order to find the problem statement

  6. To create first wireframes

  7. To coordinate usability tests

  8. To present the iteration process for the client

Opportunity

CrowdEngage is a ticketing system, allowing theatregoers to access their electronic tickets more easily, and pre-order drinks, avoiding queues.

The problem

CrowdEngage users don’t take advantage of the drink pre-ordering feature. They end up queueing, which degrades their overall experience, and therefore they’re less likely to go back to that theatre for their next show.

Solution

Our goal was to make pre-ordering drinks straightforward and enjoyable.

We did this by improving the ticket-booking journey, placing the pre-ordering feature right into the ticket booking journey.

Result

process

We used the “double diamond” process, in which each step is preceded by research or tests.

Discover / Research

CrowdEngage has two classes of users: the theatre, and the audience. (Theatre goer.) For our primary persona we focused on the audience side, because they will be the users of the app we were working on.

We sent out a survey, which helped us getting a clearer picture of the theatre-going habits of our prospective persona. After the survey we conducted 21 interviews, in which we approached both audience and theatre staff.

Personas

Define

In order to get an in-depth understanding of the problem, we used the rich dataset from our research, which we later organized using affinity mapping. This is how we identified the major problematic areas.

Design Studio

These areas served as the basis for our next step: design studio. We were lucky enough to have the client bring a representative from one of the theatres that already use the pilot.

We presented our findings to both of them, then based on the identified pain points we defined a scenario, which became the design challenge to be solved:

Elizabeth is queueing for her pre-ordered drink, but she doesn’t know where to pick it up.

Each of us started with a large blank piece of paper, divided into smaller areas. In a short timebox, we all sketched as many solutions as we could. When the allotted time was up, we presented our ideas to each other, then went on to the next round of sketches, drawing on the experience from the first.

This session was extremely educational. It helped us distance ourselves from our usual, go-to solutions, and put things in a different light. It made us understand how the system works holistically, outside of the app, and what the real reasons are for the stuttering of the current system. Briefly,

  1. Queueing for drinks is the main reason to not buy a drink at the theater

  2. Time and place for collecting pre-ordered drinks is not straightforward

  3. Existing web app does not motivate pre-ordering

  4. Synchronization issues between the app and the theatre’s system.

Develop

We started working on the wireframes. As we had a team of 4, we found voting for the best ideas the most effective. We set ourselves a time frame, in which each of us had to sketch the agreed “happy flow”. We viewed the results side-by-side, then voted using colour stickers. It has fallen on me to create the first wireframe.

Iterations to Hi fidelity

After 4 mockup versions we tested, we’ve arrived to the final high fidelity mockup in which we implemented the following changes (relative to the current web app):

We focused on the pre-order process to enhance customer experience.
We changed the hierarchy of the screen by bringing “pre-orders” to the centre of the tab, and made the action button more pronounced, making sure it’s the first thing the user notices.

  • Next we re-worked navigation.
    Previously, “maps” lead you straight to Google Maps. We changed it to an option to find your seat, and pre-order pickup spot.

  • One of the things our client t wanted to achieve with this app was the possibility to add the ticket to the phone wallet. With this feature our new system still makes users feel comfortable by letting them use familiar features that they enjoy.

  • We also add a new button to share the ticket with friends and family based on our user interviews and design studio findings.

  • Added “Merchandise” as an extra item in the pre-order menu after drinks and food, because we’ve got the feedback that people would like to pick up their pre-ordered program and merchandise with the drinks.

  • After people ordered their drinks the app asks them to choose a pickup time, offering 2 time slots to book. We added this option because users kept asking us when they can pick up their drinks during tests.

  • Finally, we also added the option to split the bill

Next steps

Our team made certain changes to the marketing site as well. In the future, this would be a good idea to explore further.

Based on customers feedback the first step should be improve the “split the bill” feature.

What I learned

Teamwork takes a bit longer, but the results are more rewarding.