Fandangit

For the third project in General Assembly’s UX design immersive, Kevin and I were assigned Fandango’s mobile app for movie tickets. The company was (hypothetically) expanding to sell tickets for live events. Their users needed a way to find, buy and retrieve digital tickets for a wide variety of events, including concerts.

Over the course of two weeks, we were introduced to new design processes:

• reading a project brief
• plotting a project plan and writing a research plan
• conducting a survey and user interviews
• making an empathy map
• writing a style sheet and specifications document

Rather than give a blow-by-blow of the entire project I’d like to lift out two pieces that captured my imagination.

TEAMWORK

Teamwork was the unspoken goal of this project. It easily took 50% of our time.

Okay, that’s a little cynical. More hands did make lighter work, but navigating different personalities, working styles, project approaches and skill sets also took more mental energy.

I was reminded that I can’t organize my thoughts unless I have some time to myself, and that after 7:00 p.m., all I want is dinner and a beer.

In an established workplace, new teammates sometimes have defined roles and a shared company culture. Kevin and I were General Assembly classmates, and Kevin was appointed our project manager, but otherwise we made our relationship up on the fly.

Fortunately we fell into a productive rhythm. Kevin did the lion’s share of interviewing users, wireframing new app screens and building prototypes that he tested. I worked on documentation, building an app map, starting a specifications document and putting together our class presentation.

There was overlap — I took notes during some of Kevin’s interviews, built components for the wireframes and checked our work on the prototypes. And Kevin talked me through steps I added to our app map, completed the spec doc, and delivered our final presentation with me.

At the beginning of the project we worked together on a project plan and wrote survey questions. And in the middle we synthesized data from our surveys, interviews and user tests together. But much of the time we worked independently, checking in on an ad hoc basis.

I admit: I learned to compromise. The project we presented was not one I would have built on my own.

Some things were better. I can be determined to get things right when they just need to get done.

But other things were arguably worse. I’m still not sure that we really know who are users are, or that the solutions we implemented were justified by the data we collected.

RESEARCH

Our instructors asked us to survey potential users using our personal social media networks. But who were our users? People who already use Fandango? People who go to live events and might use an expanded Fandango app? People who use any event app? People who simply buy tickets online?

I could imagine a series of concentric circles selecting larger and larger groups of people. If we defined our users too narrowly we might not get any results, or miss opportunities for the new app. If we didn’t focus the survey enough, we might cater our design to an audience who would never use our product.

It was as if we were sitting at the console of some survey-scope machine.

On one slider: what interests made someone a potential user of Fandango’s expanded app? The movies they could already find there, the live events they would soon be able to find there, or that the app would combine both worlds?

On another control: what technology would make someone likely to use the new app? On the narrow end of the spectrum, we could base our design on the opinions of current Fandango app customers. On the broad end, we could imagine that any person who used a smart phone might download and use an expanded Fandango app.

And what actions would qualify someone as our target audience? Did they have to purchase tickets, or could we learn something valuable from anyone who attended a movie or live event—or simply explored events on an app or online?

We decided to cast a wide net, opening the door to any smart phone user who goes to movies or attends live events.

Response was great. Overnight over 60 people answered our call on social media. And the results had some common themes.

• Most of our respondents (who were mostly between 25 and 44 years old) attended one to four movies and one to four live events each year.
• They went to a wide variety of live events, usually less than an hour from home. Live theater outranked sports in popularity.
• Most tickets cost less than $25.

Almost all of our respondents named a smart phone app that they used to find out about events, and Fandango ranked fairly high. But, when we asked how people had found out about the last event they attended, a scant three percent said they had used an app or website. Most people learned about events through friends, family and social media.

And we hadn’t asked any questions about how people actually bought tickets.

It seemed like the net we cast was too wide. We couldn’t base a new app design around people who were unlikely to ever use it. So we narrowed our perimeters, looking for people who frequently buy tickets for live events on any event app.

Predictably, the response to our second survey was smaller, and only a third of the respondents said they purchased event tickets on a mobile app “sometimes” or “all the time.”

However, the earlier trends persisted among respondents who regularly bought tickets on an app. People traveled less than an hour to see an eclectic mix of movies, music, live theater and sports, at affordable prices. And still only 9% said they had learned about their last event from an app or website.

In follow-up interviews with some of our respondents, we heard a litany of reasons why event apps are unattractive:

“I find buying things on my phone or through apps less readable” — Kate

“Apps like StubHub and Fandango almost always have extra fees involved” — Michelle

“I get many many, many updates. Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming.” — Chuck

“I check the app but buy from my desktop. The desktop is easier to navigate.” — Ady

Kevin and I forged ahead to design an expanded-yet-simplified Fandango app that would cater to a casual or even reluctant user. We focused on solving the obvious design challenge—making room for ten times as many events in a platform built for just movies—and on improving Fandango’s seat maps. In an attempt to attract more users , we also made Fandango’s promotions a more prominent feature.

If I’m not confident that our research methods were sound, I’m also doubtful that our design decisions reflected the data we got.

• We invested time in minor features like maps—an annoyance mentioned in a couple interviews—while ignoring strong data that said users learn about events from friends and on social media.
• Some of the interview comments that justified featuring promotions on the main navigation bar were answers to leading questions. I doubt that giving existing incentives a higher profile on the app would bring Fandango many more customers.
• We also spent time redesigning and renaming pages like Spotlight, below, that could have incorporated new types of events without a drastic change of appearance. Some of our design decisions undermined structure and features that are familiar to existing customers.

In short, this project was a fumbling first attempt at writing survey questions, conducting interviews, parsing data and designing as a team. I doubt that we followed many best practices. But I enjoyed the mess for the questions it uncovered.