The Instant Theatre Company
UX redesign of responsive website and mobile platform
The Team
The team consisted of two UX designers and two UI designers working in collaboration.
“Yes, and…”
This is a phrase that is repeated over and over in theatres, workshops and classes around the world. People watch and take classes in ‘Improv’. As a participant, it is a skill that can be honed over time. It is a form of escapism for millions, and most importantly, it is a form of adult play. As audience member, improv is a great nights entertainment. As many fans of the show “Whose Line is it Anyway” will attest to, Improv will make you laugh a lot!
It is for the reasons above that I was excited to have the Instant Theatre Company as a client.
What do they do?
The Instant Theatre Company is an expanding non-profit specialising in collaborative theatre.They provide both shows and training in improv comedy, sketch, stand-up, clown and acting. Instant Theatre has spent the last 20 years maintaining their reputation as the “small yet feisty East Van comedy kids”. Now, they hope to take their company to the next level to create a community centre focused on creative and collaborative performance in Vancouver.
"What do you want to make, and how can we help you make it" — Instant Theatre
The Opportunity
“Taking the company to the next level to create a community centre focused on creative and collaborative performance in Vancouver.”
Business Goals
The main business goals that were made apparent to us at the beginning of the project were:
- Streamlined interface — both front and back end
- Increase traffic
- Increase brand awareness
- Better mobile experience
- Increase conversions (shows/classes)
We considered the above points every time we made a design decision. A few examples of this are where we placed a ‘call to action’ button on each screen or the length of each screen, and where we placed the content.
Feature Requirements
Feature requirements requested by the client were:
- Calendars / tables
- Custom feedback / contact forms
- Featured plays should link to Eventbrite
Survey
- 65 respondents
- 58% audience members
- 40% performers or class/workshop member
Why do people want to be involved with improv?
As an audience member:
- For entertainment, to have a good time and laugh
- A good event to go with friends, good for socializing, sharing the experience
- Lots of improv shows involve audience participation so it’s fun being an audience member
- Witness spontaneous creativity
As a student:
- Great way to meet new friends
- Build public speaking and presentation skills, as it pushes you out of your comfort zone
- Helps build confidence
- Allows you to improve communication skills by becoming a good listening, as active listening is really important in improv
- Become more creative with ideas, have to be able to think on the spot
The results below show how most people find out about shows that they watch or classes they take.
As shown in the pie chart below, Improv/theatre and the performing arts is popular among all ages whether they are an audience member or performer or class taker or both
Interviews
Key takeaways from the interviews we conducted were:
- The sense of community and the social aspect of improv
- The fact that Improvisors can be introverts
- Performing is all about being in the moment
- There could be more diversity of people for example Indigenous peoples
- The play element of improv which is a form of escapism
- Most people felt safe when being transferred to Eventbrite (in Instant Theatre’s checkout process)
- Instant’s company values and mission was not 100% clear
Competitor Comparison Analysis
After the interviews, we looked at design, layout, functionality of other competitors and also comparable websites like the push festival and the coastal jazz festival site which all came up from our interviews/surveys.
Affinity Diagram
After the research stage, we produced an affinity diagram and some things we learnt from this were:
- Examples of other theatre companies and competitors
- The demographics of survey respondents and interviewees
- The fact that supporting local communities and businesses was important
Also why do people participate in Improv?
- Because It’s fun!
2. You get a chance to play
3. The element of Escapism,
4. In Improv, you experience the essence of human expression
User Persona
Using our user research, we produced a user persona, introducing — Stephen Moss
His Goals are:
- To live in the moment and to escape his daily routine
- To support local brands and businesses
- Taking workshops / classes to develop his self confidence and presentation skills for work
His Frustrations are:
- Turning up to an improv show that is sold out
- His busy work schedule conflicting with show times
- Struggling with low self confidence and social anxiety
Storyboard
- Stephen is nervous of presenting!
2. He is down about his presentation at work
3. He decides to do something about this and books a show at Instant Theatre
4. He really enjoys the show
5. A friend recommends that he signs up to an Improv Class
6. He then signs up to a class at Instant Theatre to improve his presenting skills
Feature Prioritization
As we had a long list of features to implement, we decided to prioritise them as we were working through a 3 week sprint, and time was limited.
Site Map and User Flow
The focus of our primary user flow is to allow the user to buy tickets to shows. Also for the user to be able to register for classes, and for business users, being able to hire the theatre and book events, and rent the studio spaces.
Landing Page
From our research, we found that the original landing page of Instant Theatre had some problems:
- Space on the home page is not well used
- The photo is unpopular
We also removed the blog section from the footer and the site as a whole as it was not being kept up to date.
Home Page
In the new design we made full use of space:
- The banner is now a carousel that rotates left automatically
- The banner showcases shows on today because Stephen would like to be able to buy tickets on the go at the last minute
- We added Instagram photos as social media is a huge asset to reach out to more audiences
- We also added a “what is improv?” For new users like Stephen Moss
Calendar Inspiration
Through competitor and comparative analysis and domain research, we found this calendar on the Push Festival website.
We were drawn by it’s cool interface and unique calendar function so we wanted to try this out as opposed to using the traditional grid like calendar we usually see.
In this calendar, there is the ability to filter shows by genre/type, and select or deselect certain dates. the show results list immediately changes as you change the filters, feedback is instant.
So we included it in our paper prototype and tested it out.
We learned that most users strongly preferred the visually appealing grid / show card view of the shows/classes which included poster image as well as opposed to the list view only which was dry, text heavy, and unappealing and not visual enough.
Through testing, we found that this calendar format presented more problems and usability issues than we thought
So we had to scrap the idea and think this over completely
Design Studio
- We got together and redesigned it through a collaborative design studio session.
- We decided that the best redesign of the show calendar and filters would be the one on the far left, based loosely off of flight scheduling websites
Here below we condensed the calendar and filters into one row and we used the card format for the shows
The calendar was minimised and filters arranged more clearly
Everything fits on the page and space is maximised this way, before the push calendar was too large and took up an entire page on it’s own and wasted too much space:
We also added a ‘what we teach’ section as users often missed class tables at the bottom and only saw the improv class offerings and details, not knowing that Instant teaches classes.
So we included this section which is especially helpful for new users or new comers to improv and theatre classes
This page was very long so we decided to cut the sections up into their own pages to avoid making the user scroll a lot to search for relevant information
From testing and interviews, most users appreciated this colour coded calendar so we decided to include this as this was a more visual way to represent essentially the same information as the table format of the class list
Prototype
