Case study: SnackTime app — Order snacks inside a theatre

SnackTime is an application that serves the purpose of letting the users order snacks from inside the movie theatre. This app aims to save people’s time of standing in long queues and it provides a group ordering feature as well.

Here’s a link to the prototype!

It’s a dark movie theatre, eyes focused on the movie ‘Brahmastra’, right after intermission, ready for the story to unfold before us, a theatre staff interrupts the person in the front, the view is blocked, there is chaos, the order got mixed up, there are too many food items, the only payment option is by cash or card, the debit card pin number has to be entered a couple of times. Wait?! Was that Deepika Padukone playing the role of young Shiva’s mother? What is happening? Oh man! I missed it.

The Problem

That was the story of me discovering that there may be a problem with the whole process of ordering snacks during intermission of a movie:

1. Standing in long queues outside during intermission and missing some parts of the movie.
2. If you’re with a group then sending a picture of the menu to the group, waiting for them to decide what to have, trying to remember each of their order items or asking them to WhatsApp you the items which can be quite inconvenient.
3. In a case where you give your order to the helpers present inside the theatre during intermission, then getting interrupted by the staff who bring your snacks during the movie which can be inconvenient for you and disturb other people around you.

User Survey (Quantitative Research)

After discovery, it was time to check if others are facing or have faced something similar as well, so I conducted a survey.

Here are the insights from the user survey:

1. All the responders prefer ordering snacks before or during the intermission of a movie.
2. Majority of the responses indicated that people find the queue long and they worry that they might miss out on the movie.
3. Majority faced the issue of getting interrupted by the staff when the movie is running resulting in a distraction.
4. The responses indicated that they either memorise, write the order down somewhere or just order the regular items for the rest of the group that has come with them.
5. Lastly, all of the responders do not carry the right amount of cash and prefer UPI/card payment mode instead.

Competitor Analysis

After the user survey, it was time to see if there are other applications that address the same problem and understand the user flow, features and flaws.

Although the applications I considered for the competitor analysis are indirect competitors as of now, I personally used all these apps to get
an insight and asked the opinions of the people around me who are extensive users of the apps to understand the overall user experience.

User Persona

Based on my user survey insights and competitor analysis insights, I made 2 user personas to help with the entire design process.

User Journey

Emotions a user might feel during the above user journey :
Confused, Overwhelmed, Stressed, Worried, Anxious, Focused

Improvement opportunities:

• An app with a menu available
• A way of sharing the order link
• Placing the order through the app
• An online payment option in the app

Storyboarding

I created storyboards to understand the whole experience that the user will have. Some messy, defying all laws of art sketches ahead!

Enter SnackTime

In the age of technology, where many things are available at your fingertips, people who love going to the theatres after a long day still have to stand in long queues outside the auditorium to get snacks, try to remember other people’s orders and miss some parts of the movie, hence not having a satisfactory experience at the movies.

SnackTime app aims at solving the problem of leaving the auditorium and provides the option of ordering from inside the theatre. The group order feature adds the convenience of saving time in remembering all the order items that other people of the group want.

User Flow

Information Architecture

Solution

After Wireframing, it is time to take a look at the final screens!

Here are the final screens of SnackTime!

Iterations

After a lot of A/B testing, getting feedback and going back and forth with the designs, here are some major iterations that I would like to showcase.

A figma screenshot depicting all the interations before arriving at the final results

Takeaways

1. Option to cancel the order can be added.
2. The app can be made responsive for different devices.
3. As this was my first project, it got quite challenging but I
   remembered to take a breather and keep at it with a calm mind.
4. I got to learn Figma and Adobe Photoshop, and got information
   on the various resources that are available online!

Thank you 3000

Thank you to my family for being a constant support during this journey!

It would mean a lot to me if you could long press on the clap icon, drop a few claps & show your support!

Do reach out to me on LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram for feedbacks and opportunities, I’m currently looking for UX/UI design internships!

With music, dance, a good movie and some food, who could not be happy? :)