Case study: Your cinema ticket booking platform

Problem Background and why I did this:
Movie. It is fun, entertaining, and drains emotion. Who likes to watch movies? The pandemic hit us in 2020 resulting in a decrease in revenue and growth of cinema ticket orders around the globe, especially in Indonesia. But in 2021, it has been up and giving a good signal that people tend to watch their favorite movie again in the cinema since many new titles in 2021 come up (https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/eservices/event-tickets/cinema-tickets/indonesia#revenue), *call all Marvel fans.
A few months ago, I considered making a project with my friend, Hary. We like to watch movies and also based on my experience using the other ticket platform but ended up with frustration when searching the ticket I ordered due to hidden appearance. Eventually, an idea came up in our mind to make a ticket booking platform for movie lovers and non-ones. This is our very first own project and we make a good collaboration afterward. We divided our roles in this project. I did much in research and he did the design but we were helping each other.

UX RESEARCH PROCESS

Research Plan

First, we made a research plan. In the design process, research is the foundation for creating a good design because we know what the user needs and how we solve their problem. The structure of our research plan came as follows:

Background: Taken from my experience using the other ticket platform that wasted a bit of time searching for the ticket ordered and our fondness to watch movies, bring us to make an app that can be accessible and time-efficient for users.

Objective:

1. User Objective: User can have a good experience and satisfaction in the application
2. Research Objective: Obtain an understanding of users’ needs and their pain points.

Research Question:

1. How do users experience the same product at a previous time?
2. What are the users’ pain points?

Methodology: In-depth interview

Research Tool: Gmeet and Phone Call

Research Process: In-depth interview with 5 participants

Targeted User: Watch in the cinema this year (2021) and use the ticketing booking application previously.

User Interview

After we made the research plan, we arranged the interview questions. We started with general questions (demography, tech-savvy behavior, etc) and ended up with specific. We adjusted the specific questions based on the previous experience of whether the users booked the ticket offline or online. In this section, we would like to dig and collect the insight:

1. User behavior when booking the ticket offline and online.
2. The user’s pain points during their journey to watch a movie in the cinema.

Key findings:

1. Movie Research

Before users go watch the movie, they tend to search and do a little research about the movie such as plot, rating, actors, and synopsis. They would like to know what movie they will watch and how the story goes.

2. Queue Line Makes Frustration

This is the pain point for the users who book the ticket offline. They should stand in line with the other people and wait until the moment has come. This is such a waste of time and affects their mood. They are also afraid to know that the ticket sold out or other changing at the end of the line. On the other hand, complicated payment affects this. When users want to book online/offline but the payment method doesn’t support or is not on the list, it forces them to stay in the queue offline and change to another method.

3. Recommendation Chain

Sometimes users get recommendations from social media or their circle about must-watch movies and influence them to watch. It also occurs vice versa when they think the movie is worth it.

User Persona & Empathy Map

User Persona

After collecting the answer and digesting key findings, we made a user persona and empathy map to have a big picture about our users. User Persona is a picture of the user representative and includes motivation, biography representative, goal, and pain points. An empathy map is the break-down picture from the user persona to obtain specific findings from users like what they say, do, think, and feel.

Empathy Map

User Journey Map

After capturing the big picture of the users, we made a user journey map. This is the part where we know the process and journey of the users pre until post using the application. There are four phases in this journey map:

User Journey Map

1. Awareness: the phase when users find our app to book the ticket.
2. Consideration: The phase when users consider and decide what movie to watch.
3. Registration: Users start to register in-app.
4. Conversion: Users book the ticket and make a payment.
5. Post-Transaction: Users get the ticket and are ready to watch.

Information Architecture

From the journey map, we see the whole process or journey of the users. After that, we made an information Architecture, the pieces of information are included in one app. We discussed and finally structuralized the information we want to deliver through the app. We have four-page on the taskbar: Home, Cinema, Promo, and Profile. The insight is we know what kind of information we would like to display as the user flow from one page to the other page.

Information Architecture

DESIGN PROCESS

Wireframe/Low-Fidelity

This is the first phase before we designed with full of colors. It looks like a skeleton. We designed without any colors except B&W to have a better understanding of the frame before touching with colors.

Wireframe

Hi-Fidelity

The final touch for the full design. We considered the accessibility of the users, so we decided to design two kinds of frames: dark and light mode. Specifically, on the homepage, we put a very short summary of the movie so users know what the movie is about without searching on the whole plot.

Hi-Fidelity (Dark Mode)

Hi-Fidelity (Light Mode)

Insights:
1. Understanding users’ need and pain points are paramount to getting an understanding of how users do with our product, their mental model, and behavior.

2. Before doing the research, drafting the research plan will help the team to know what to do and prepare

3. Empathy Map will give a big picture of users based on what they say, think, do, and feel to the team before stepping on to the next stage.

4. Accessibility of design is considered by the variety of users who are using the app, not just merely existing users.

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