FANDANGO — Mobile app feature integration concept
Duration: 2 Weeks | Project Status: Ongoing
The Task
Our client Fandango has asked us to create a new feature for their existing mobile app. We were tasked to create an event section where users are able to discover and purchase event tickets, and store their digital passes.
My Role: Research & Design. Collaborated with two UX designers.
Materials & Resources: Paper, Pen, Sketch, InVision, iPhone, MacBook.
Before we begin…
Who is Fandango?
Fandango is a company that specializes in offering users the ability to discover and purchase movie tickets.
The Market for Events
Our team took a look at the market for the types of events out there. We found out that there are actually different types; with events ranging from small local events to big venue concerts and shows.
Now with so many different events out there…
We wanted to find out how people shopped for events.
So, our question was — How do users go about discovering and purchasing event tickets?
Now with all this in mind…
Let’s Rumble.
Research
We didn’t want to interview just anyone, so we created a screener survey. Our screener aimed to capture qualified people who usually bought tickets online and uses the Fandango app.
Our Screener captured 20 responses and we interviewed 8 of these participants.
For the 8 participants we decided to interview, our goal was to find out what were their behaviors, needs, motivation and attitude when it comes to discovering and purchasing tickets online.
To get the answers we need and to facilitate the interview, here is our interview discussion guide:
How do you usually find out about events? and What did you use to find them?
Tell me about an event that you recently attended.
Where did you buy your tickets?
Tell me about the last time you purchased a ticket for an event.
Tell me about how you redeem your tickets. Walk me through the process.
Tell me about the paid events you attended within the last year.
What did we find?
Problem Statement
The process of discovering local events that are interesting and relevant can be overwhelming. There are multiple places to find events of different genres and categories, venues both big and small.
Based on our findings: How might we help our users discover personalized events and purchase tickets?
Personas
Design Ideation
From our research insights, we knew we needed to create a simple way for our users to personalize their news feed and to browse through the different genres of events. With the many different categories of events out there, we needed to figure out a way to condense all the information into a digestible manner.
So, let’s cue in Hick’s Law — It is basically the reaction time of people when presented with a number of choices. The more choices there are, the longer it takes for a person to make a decision.
This philosophy was perfect for our users since there are so many different categories of events to choose from, so we applied this to our overall design. Plus, it is just not fun when presented with so much choices when you’re just trying to get relevant information. Then how might we make it fun and easy?
Let’s find out through Design studio!
Through 3 rounds of design studio, our team built upon each other’s ideas and our initial sketches evolved into something we all agreed would be fun and easy for our users.
To tackle the challenge of:
- Navigation — When navigating through the app, we kept Fandango’s current tab bar, but we didn’t want the search results to mix in both the movies and events from the new feature because we wanted users to feel acclimated from our MVP before we can really decide if we want to create a cohesive navigation flow that will offer both the movie and event information. So, we replaced the “Go Now” section with a section solely for events.
- Personalized news feed — We first came up with an onboarding process where users chose categories of events that they were interested in after they clicked on the “Events” section for the first time. But, we remembered Hick’s Law and decided to allow users to be presented with a single category where they can swipe left or right to input their preference.
- Digital Passes — This was actually already in Fandango, located in the “Account” section. So, instead of creating new sketches for it, we decided to test their current function to test if users had any issues locating it and created one sketch where users are able to see it presented to them after they purchased their tickets.
- Split Pay — This option is presented at the end of a user’s purchase, but users had no way of knowing its existence beforehand, so we decided to let them know it exists during the middle of the purchasing process.
From Lo-Fidelity → Mid-Fidelity
Prototype Test
Scenario + Tasks
- You are an active person and want your news feed to receive events that fit your lifestyle. Personalize your news feed accordingly.
- It is your friend’s birthday this weekend and you want to surprise her. Plus you know she loves to party. Help her find an event.
- You and your friends want to surprise the birthday friend this weekend. Purchase 10 tickets for everyone.
- After purchasing tickets for everyone, you need to collect your money from your group of friends. Find a way to split the bill.
- Some time has passed and it is the night of the birthday event. Locate your digital passes.
1st Round of testing
Task 1: 3/5 success rate. Users found it to be engaging and fun to use. However, some was expecting the prototype to allow them to swipe through the categories and thought they had to tap the image. The star, which was meant to indicate that they liked the category, users weren’t exactly sure what it would do.
Task 2: 4/5 Success rate. Although we had a high success rate, users voiced the need for the “weekend” filters to be more prominent, name of categories were misleading, and needed the event descriptions to say which day of the week the event took place.
Task 3: 5/5 Success rate. Users had no issue purchasing tickets, but the information that the “split pay” indicator provided wasn’t clear enough. Users thought it was useful, but had no idea when they were able to use its function.
Task 4: 5/5 Success rate. Users had no issue locating the ability to collect money from their friends via PayPal at the end of their purchase.
Task 5: 3/5 Success rate. Due to organizational issues, some users had trouble locating their digital passes.
1st Round of Iterations
- Task 1: Allowed users to swipe during the onboarding process and changed the “star” icon to a “check mark”. Also, added images and increased its fidelity.
- Task 2: Made the weekend filter more prominent, added images, reworded some of the categories and event descriptions, and bumped up the fidelity.
- Task 3: Included how and when users were able to utilize the split pay function.
- Task 5: Added a header layer, “My Account” above “Purchases”.
2nd Round of testing
Task 1: 6/6 Success rate.
Task 2: 5/6 Success rate. Only 1 user had issues with locating the weekend filter.
Task 3: 5/6 Success rate. Although users found this task to be simple, some thought the quantity box was too small and was expecting a drop down menu to input a numerical value instead of a keyboard.
Task 4: 5/5 Success rate.
Task 5: 6/6 Success rate.
PROTOTYPE
Next Steps!
The implementation of the events feature was a success. Users were able to personalize their news feed and purchase tickets. Fandango’s current option to store digital passes and to split pay had minor issues, but was fixed after a few iterations, therefore, we did not have to construct a whole new function for it.
In terms of design iterations, we will be moving forward by iterating the quantity box size and a drop down menu on the ticket purchasing screen, and figure out a way to make the “weekend” filter to be more noticeable.
