Extending Fandango (the Movie Ticket App) to cover Sports, Music…the works

Ashish Rao
Jul 23, 2017 · 7 min read

The unbearable lightness of movies

Movies are sweet. Movies are bitter. “Exciting,” “heart pounding,” “moving” are amongst the zillion adjectives that are often used to describe Movies. But in my opinion there is an immediacy and realness which movies simply cannot bring to the table. The crack of a bat against a ball at a Yankees game on a brisk spring day, the palpable energy of a Broadway show (try the classic Roger & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” or the zenre bending, politically-charged “Hamilton” — especially from the mezzanine section). Did I mention the gut wrenching rawness of a play written by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesmen) or George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion)? And of course there are those epic festivals like Coachella (Music) or Burning Man (Alternate Lifestyle) that are the stuff of legend. ‘Nuff said.

Fandango, the famous Movie app, is a one trick pony that doles out movie recommendations and tickets, nothing more nothing less:

Fandango is synonymous with Movies. Nothing else, unfortunately.

The Project Mandate

For our second project at General Assembly, the mandate was to extend the offerings of the Fandango App from Movies to pretty much everything else — Sports, Theater, Broadway, Music concerts and anything else that goes as entertainment these days. This also included improving on the recommendations, expanding the scope of event discovery and the ability to retrieve and view Digital Passes.

The Golden Trio

As a group of three (The Golden Trio) we decided to divide and conquer, which would enable each of us to tackle every step of the process. We were cognizant of our strengths and weaknesses and after much strategizing and planning the pack was ready to take on the challenge.

The Trio deliberating on a delicate matter

Competitive Analysis

Competitors like Eventbrite, Stubhub and Ticketmaster are far ahead in the game with the closest (Stubhub) coming in at nearly 5 times Fandango’s yearly revenue.

Fandango has some work to do

And with a yearly national/US revenue of 5 billion to aspire to, Fandango has a long and winding way to go. While none of these competitors were offering movie tickets it is fair to assume that Fandango is very good at catering to a niche audience? But at a cost, unfortunately.

User Research

There was a general but, methinks flawed consensus that Millennials did not care for Broadway. Or that Baby Boomers were mostly luddites, with no use for online shopping — always buying tickets in person.

We soon realized that we had to step out of the Echo Chamber…aka our class, so we promptly ventured into the NYC park system to engage users beyond the pale of the millennial age warp.

Jon Karaklides plans events with friends on his phone

Quotes from Interviews

Here are some of the memorable quotes from our interviews that set the stage for our research and findings

  1. “If I can’t make it to an event I would like to resell my tickets on a marketplace”
  2. “I don’t like missing out on events that are so close by”
  3. “I always look for coupons of deals before purchasing tickets”
  4. “30 minutes is the most I will travel for a local event”

Research findings

In terms of the type of events that people preferred , it came as no surprise that movies were the most popular, followed closely by Music Concerts, Sporting events and even Broadway shows.

An aggregation of all the data that we had gathered against every user helped us gain a stronger understanding of their behaviors and habits in terms of location preferences, social norms, event discovery, kinds of events etc as drawn up here:

Synthesis of all this information led us to the following conclusions:

1.90% of users prefered attending concerts together than alone.

2.90% users identified events on social networks recommendations.

3.85% of users prefered attending events near them — an hour at the most.

4.75% of user prefered e-tickets / digital passes.

5.60% of user desired digital pass sharing / reselling.

That got us down to the Problem statement: People need an efficient way to explore and discover local events while easily sharing tickets so they can expand their entertainment horizons.

Iteration 1: Laying it out on Paper

With all the Research at hand we embarked on creating Paper Prototypes:

The Landing Page

Testing the Iteration 1 of the Landing Page we realized

  1. Users had not absorbed the fact that Fandango was more than Movies even though we had laid it out very succinctly using categories such as Concerts, Sports and Events including Movies.
  2. Users did not recognize the “Go Now” tab as leading to events in their vicinity.
  3. The carousel at the top of the page failed to impress on users that it contained various events including movies
Digital Pass
  1. In the Digital Pass page, it was not clear to users how they could share their pass on the Marketplace (in case they could not make it to the event). The generic Share icon catered to Social Media, not to a Marketplace.

Iteration 2

With a good understanding of all the shortcomings of the paper prototype identified through Iteration 1 , we proceeded with the detailed annotated wireframes in Sketch.

  1. To circumvent any confusion (as to where Fandango was headed) we decided on adding an overlay that would emphasize that Fandango was indeed more than movies.
Overlay Wireframe that is displayed only once when the app is opened

The Overlay would appear only the first time the user opened the app where they could set up their preference in terms of events they were interested in. Say if a user were not interested in Movies the app would not offer any Movie recommendations at all (or maybe sparingly, depending on the Business)

2. We renamed the “Go Now” tab to “Near Me” (with an easily recognizable Location icon) and added a Map to that particular screen showing the user where they were and interesting events in their vicinity:

“Near Me” Wireframe with Location icon for easy recognition

3. The Carousel would need to be tackled in the final avatar of the app so we had to skip this one.

4. The Digital Pass screen made it clear that users could share the Digital Pass with friends on a Marketplace, as opposed to Social Media.

The Social Media share would be independent of the Marketplace share.

The Final Prototype

The wireframes above paved the way to the Final Prototype that we executed in Invision. Some of the Final screen are presented below:

Overlay that emphasizes that Fandango is much more than movies

The Landing Page was then self explanatory, showcasing a multi-event carousel and four categories (Movies, Concerts, Sports and Events).

The Lyft Advertisement (Rides on Tap) seems to us to be a natural consort to the Fandango app.

Identifying Events “Near Me” got a whole lot easier what with a clear “You are here” pointer and nearby events highlighted in Orange.

And Digital Passes proved easy to share via the Fandango Marketplace:

Digital Pass that is easy to share via Fandango Friend / Marketplace

Summary

We hope that this update will propel Fandango a step closer to achieving an elevated yearly Revenue, given its extended reach into wider areas of entertainment. There are, of course a few more features that we envision for the future:

● Price Matching (between competitors)

● Notifications (especially email which has apparently risen sphinx like despite the social media onslaught)

● Targeting users that are over 50 years — who have demonstrated time and again that changing behaviors is possible. The onus for that change is on us — User Experience Designers.

We sincerely thank you for reading!

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