How I Improved The Experience Of Going And Watching Movie In A Multiplex Theatre Using The Design Thinking Process: UX Case Study

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UXM Community

6 min readJan 19, 2023

Hi there, I am Zaid. Let’s dive into the journey of how my teammates and I improved Sam’s experience of watching movie in a multiplex theatre.

The Empathize Stage

This is the first stage of the Design Thinking Process. In this Stage, we try to understand the user so that we can understand his needs.

So we wrote down Sam’s journey (all steps included) of going and watching a movie in a multiplex theatre up to coming back home.

The Define stage

In this stage, we started to identify various problems that Sam faces in different steps of his journey.

Problems associated with the different steps involved:

Finding parking and paying for the parking.

Problems:

Parking is not available.
Network issue while payment
No one to guide to the parking area.
There is no label on the parking to park the vehicle.

Security Check

Problem: There is no locker to keep the valuable items.

Finding the Screen

Problem: No proper guidance or directions to find the screen.

Going inside the Screen and finding the given seats and watching the movie.

Problems:

Can’t find the seats.
The seats are not comfortable.
People next to Sam are making a lot of noise.
Ac not working properly
The sound quality is not good.
The cup holder is broken.
There is no proper place to keep our refreshments.
The front seat is near the screen.

Buying refreshments during the interval / waiting for the movie to start again or going to the washroom during the interval.

Problems:

Long queue to buy the refreshments and Delay due to payment issues while buying refreshments.
Can’t buy refreshments while watching the movie.
The washroom is not clean
The washroom is not sufficient to accommodate the people.

Going to the parking and returning the receipt.

Problems:

Lost the receipt.
There is no label in the parking to find the vehicle.

Then we selected the top 3 Problems by voting:

Parking is not available in the mall or multiplex.

Explanation: Sam can miss the movie or get delayed for the movie. If he parks the car somewhere else there is a fear of theft or damage. The vehicle can be towed by the traffic police.

The seats are not comfortable.

Explanation: Sam would step out of the theatre before the completion of the movie. It could create some health issues.

Delay due to long queue to buy the refreshments.

Explanation: Sam can miss some parts of the movie because of the waiting.

The Ideation Stage

In this Stage, we tried to come up with ideas that would solve the problems faced by Sam.

Problem 1: Parking is not available in the mall or multiplex.

Ideas:

The mall management should display the parking availability on a digital board while entering the mall or multiplex and The multiplex management can rent out or use some other parking facilities available nearby. Provide directions to other parking.
Charge according to the duration of the parking that would reduce unnecessary parking of some vehicles.
Advanced booking of the parking.

Problem 2: Seats are not comfortable

Ideas:

They should keep some extra seats in case of broken seats.
Change the foam and fabric of the seats.
Add the tray option to the seats.
Multiplex can have a feedback system to get feedback from the users.

Problem 3: Delay due to the long queue to buy the refreshments.

Ideas:

Online booking of the refreshments while watching the movie.
Increase the staff to avoid the long queue
Add the QR code beside your seat
Install a separate screen to order the refreshments like a kiosk.

Then by voting among the teammates we selected the problem and solution for which we would be making the prototyping:

Selected problem: Parking is not available.

Selected Solution:
The mall management should display the parking availability on a digital board while entering the mall or multiplex and, The multiplex management can rent out or use some other parking facilities available nearby. Provide directions to other parking.

The Prototype Stage

This is a digital display board that would be placed outside the mall.
It displays total vehicle slots, filled vehicle slots, and available vehicle slots in the mall parking.
Here L1 and L2 are Floor 1 and Floor 2.
The mall management can also rent out another parking near the mall.
The display board will display the address of the nearby parking and one person would be there to guide the people to go to the nearby parking.

The Feedback Stage

We showed the prototype to Sam to get his feedback.

Sam’s Feedback:

The meaning of “L1 and L2” is not clear.
Finding the exact available parking space is difficult.
There is no need to display the vehicle slots

Final Prototype

After receiving the feedback we did some changes to the prototype:

We replaced L1 and L2 with Floor 1 and Floor 2.
For each floor, we can have another display to get the exact location of parking.
We removed the total vehicle slots from the display as it is unnecessary information.

First display outside the mall

This board will be placed outside the mall and it would show only the available vehicle slots on different floors inside the mall parking.

It would also display the address to nearby parking.

When no parking is available the board would look like this:

When parking is not available it would be displayed in red color so that it can grab users’ attention from a distance.

Second display inside the mall parking on each floor

This board would be placed inside the mall parking on each floor. This board would enable Sam to find the exact location of available parking space. It would display the blocks in descending order according to available spaces.