Today Tix

TodayTix

Best prices on theatre tickets

April 2022 — Current

product design

user research

Role: product designer

Website · Appstore

Last updated July 2023

Currently working full time for TodayTix. To learn more about the platform, visit the appʼs website.

Enhancing Ticket Control and Flexibility

Introduction

The aim of these projects were to improve the user experience by enhancing ticket control and flexibility within the TodayTix platform. This case study encompasses three key projects: My Orders, Reserved Offers, Ticket protection, and Relisting. Each project addresses specific business problems, key performance indicators (KPIs), and goals, contributing to the overall objective of providing a seamless and user-friendly ticket purchasing experience. These were just some of the key projects I worked on

Highlighting the aspects of the checkout and post purchase experience that I worked on in "Blue"

My Orders - Central Hub for Ticket Control

Business problem

TodayTix identified a business problem of lacking a centralized hub for users to manage and track their ticket purchases, leading to user confusion and a significant increase in support queries regarding ticket delivery, ticket validity, and the process for redeeming ticket protection. Additionally, the absence of a streamlined post-show rating system for TodayTix and show score evaluations further contributed to the challenge of providing a cohesive ticket management experience for users.

Key goals

Improve user control and visibility over their ticket orders.
Reduce the number of support queries related to ticket management.

Approach

To address this problem, the My Orders feature was developed as a central hub within the TodayTix app, providing users with a comprehensive overview of their past and upcoming orders. The approach involved adding My Orders to the tab bar for easy access and implementing a clear system for communicating ticket statuses.

Key Performance Indicators

The success of the My Orders project was measured through the following KPIs:

User Engagement: Increase in user engagement with the My Orders feature, indicating improved control and visibility over ticket orders.
Support Queries: Reduction in the number of support queries related to ticket management, demonstrating the effectiveness of the new centralized hub.

By tracking these KPIs, TodayTix aimed to gauge the impact of the My Orders feature on user satisfaction, engagement, and support workload.

How did we get there?

The current experience

The aim of the projects was to improve the user experience by enhancing ticket control and flexibility within the TodayTix platform. This case study encompasses three key projects: My Orders, Reserved Offers, and Relisting. Each project addresses specific business problems, key performance indicators (KPIs), and goals, contributing to the overall objective of providing a seamless and user-friendly ticket purchasing experience.

Legacy My orders feature

My Orders v1: Key considerations

Ticket status

My initial version 1 design exploration put an emphasis at designing for the problem of in progress tickets and communicating the ticket status. The ticket status played a crucial role in addressing a significant customer support challenge faced by TodayTix. Due to a surge in customer support tickets and user inquiries, there was a pressing need to effectively communicate and provide clarity on the whereabouts of tickets.

Version 1 of the ticket progress in layout

Ticket progress inspiration

Deeper inspiration came from competitive research and the concept of movie minions as pocket helpers, guiding users through their purchase journey and creating a personalized experience. Progress bars were also incorporated to help users understand the status of their orders.

Version 1 Ticket progress module states

Ticket UX and visibility

A system of ticket status progress tags was implemented to effectively communicate ticket status updates to users without requiring them to tap into each individual ticket. This solution aimed to improve the user experience by providing clear and easily accessible information regarding the progress of their tickets. The design and implementation of ticket status progress tags were guided by usability heuristics to ensure an intuitive and efficient user interface.

Visibility and Size: Optimize the size and placement of bar codes and QR codes for easy identification and access.
Scannability: Ensure high contrast and test the codes in different conditions to facilitate accurate scanning.
Adaptability: Design codes compatible with various scanning technologies to accommodate different venues and time of day.

The design of bar codes and QR codes in the ticket view aimed to optimize the user experience at theatre events, ensuring effortless scanning and validation for users while reducing wait times. Clear codes provided event workers with easy readability, facilitating efficient entry management.

Bar code and QR code sizing and margin spacing

My Orders v2

Deeper exloration and consideration

Make easy to access from anywhere. Remove the need for navigation, and elevate the level so it isn't buried in "My Account".
Elevate the experience to make it more delightful. Making the design less systematic and more of a branding moment.
Reduce tech left. Due to tech constraints we had to pivot our design to make sure it it was consistent with current design patterns in the app.

Version 2 of the my orders feature

Solution

The ticket status played a crucial role in addressing a significant customer support challenge faced by TodayTix. Due to a surge in customer support tickets and user inquiries, there was a pressing need to effectively communicate and provide clarity on the whereabouts of tickets.

Redesigned Tab Bar Integration: The My Orders feature was strategically integrated into the tab bar, making it easily accessible from any screen within the TodayTix app. This improved visibility and provided users with a consistent and centralized location to access their ticket orders.
Ticket Status Progress Tags: To communicate ticket status updates to users without the need for additional taps, ticket status progress tags were introduced. These visual indicators, such as progress bars or icons, allowed users to quickly understand the status of their orders at a glance. This simplified and streamlined the process of tracking ticket progress.

Planned Features

The following features got enough time to be conceptualized, but not enough to even be designed:

Personalized Recommendations. Utilize data and user preferences to provide personalized show recommendations to enhance the discovery of new productions and increasing user engagement.
Ticket Protection Options. Introduce ticket protection options within the My Orders feature, enabling users to purchase additional coverage for unexpected circumstances such as event cancellations or personal emergencies post purchase.
Places. Enable people to discover nearby things to do or places to go.
Enhanced Sorting and Filtering. Improve the sorting and filtering options within the My Orders interface, allowing users to organize their tickets based on various criteria, such as date, show type, or venue.

These are roughly ranked by ambitiousness and my estimated ROI. Some of them are very involved and require new data sources along with a substantial amount of design and engineering to build them out.

Reserved Offers - Alternative Ticket Purchasing Option

Introduction

The Reserved Offers project aimed to introduce an alternative way for users to purchase tickets while also allowing TodayTix to sell at-risk inventory tickets profitably. The business problem addressed was the need to increase ticket sales and revenue by offering users discounted tickets while optimizing the utilization of available inventory.

Business problem

Addressing the need to increase ticket sales and revenue by offering users discounted tickets while optimizing the utilization of at-risk inventory.

Key goals

Increase ticket sales and revenue. Optimize the utilization of at-risk inventory.To achieve these goals, the following solutions were implemented:
At-Risk Inventory Highlighting: To incentivize users to purchase at-risk inventory tickets, a dynamic animation was designed to draw attention to the offers. This animation highlighted the value and exclusivity of the tickets being upgraded, encouraging users to make a purchase.

Approach

To tackle this problem, the approach focused on highlighting at-risk inventory tickets and providing a seamless discount application process to encourage users to make a purchase.

Key Performance Indicators

The primary KPIs important to this project were:

Increased Ticket Sales: The project aimed to drive an increase in the number of tickets sold through Reserved Offers, indicating the success of the alternative ticket purchasing option.
Revenue Growth: The goal was to generate a higher revenue through the sale of discounted tickets while optimizing the utilization of at-risk inventory.

By focusing on these KPIs, TodayTix aimed to measure the effectiveness of the Reserved Offers feature in boosting ticket sales and revenue while efficiently managing inventory.

Constraints

While designing we were constrained to building out the reserved offer experience within checkout and the need to highlight what the user previously selected.

Reserved offers in checkout flow

Legacy My orders feature

Ideation process

Issues with the explorations

Tooltips. This component would be very difficult to draw on the map view with out tech stack at the time. Although the idea would later then be introduced in a later feature it was something we stayed away from for this feature.
Change of seat in the same section. There was also something else that was considered when looking deeper into the problem, sometimes we would suggest a seat that were in the same section. So how did we communicate that in a clear way.
Other venue maps for pick your own seat (PYOS). Another thing that had to be looked into was how does this behavior look like on other venue maps.

Round 2: Stress testing

Introducing a moment of animation that would callout to a user in a subtle way without it being alarming and still bringing in a delightful moment for the user.

Solution

The Reserved Offers feature introduced an alternative way for users to purchase tickets at discounted prices while allowing TodayTix to sell at-risk inventory profitably. By highlighting exclusive ticket upgrades with dynamic animations and seamlessly applying discounts, users were incentivized to explore and purchase discounted tickets, contributing to increased ticket sales and revenue.

Averaging ~36% Purchase Conversion Rate

Reserved offers solution

Learnings

Throughout the UX design process for Reserved Offers, several key learnings were acquired:

Balancing Business Objectives and User Needs: Striking the right balance between maximizing revenue and enhancing the user experience was vital in creating a feature that met both business and user objectives.
Clear Communication: Ensuring transparent communication of the value and conditions of discounted tickets was crucial to building user trust and encouraging conversions.
Iterative Design: Frequent iterations and feedback loops with users and stakeholders were essential in refining the design and aligning it with user needs and preferences.

Animation

Introducing a micro-animation that would callout to a user in a subtle way without it being alarming and still bringing in a delightful moment for the user.

Relisting feature

Relisting - Flexible Ticket Resale

Introduction

Relisting aimed to introduce a reselling feature to allow customers to sell their unused tickets. To assess customer perceptions and attitudes towards this potential feature, we will evaluate their views on ticket reselling and understand the value they see in it, even without a guarantee. By conducting this research, we aim to gain insights that will enable us to create a feature that offers maximum value to our customers while minimizing risks.

Problem at hand

The problem with traditional reselling methods is that they can be a cumbersome and frustrating process for customers, often resulting in price gouging. Also as a business TodayTix was doing this manually for users.

Current solution

The current solution is solely emailing customer support that requires someone to engage and interact with each user.

Proposed solution

Provide a platform for reselling distressed inventory, benefiting both buyers and sellers while ensuring a fulfilling and profitable experience for event organizers and customers.

Users

Customers who are no longer able to attend the events.

Benefits

The reselling feature allows TodayTix customers to sell unused tickets, reducing the risk of financial loss. Buyers benefit from access to tickets not available through traditional channels, filling seats and creating a more fulfilling and profitable experience for event organizers. The feature streamlines the ticketing process and minimizes waste.

Implementation Approach

Select users who have purchased from TodayTix as well as those who have not
Conduct seven initial interviews and seek consent to follow up for validation of specific ideas
Synthesize the research and insights gathered
Create prototypes using Figma, starting with low-fidelity wireframes and progressing to high-fidelity prototypes with detailed designs

User Research Goals

Customers who are no longer able to attend the events.

Identify customer pain points around reselling and reselling tickets without a guarantee of resale.
Determine if customers see value in a reselling feature without a guarantee of resale.
Understand the level of trust customers have in a reselling feature without a guarantee of resale.
Determine what features would make the reselling feature more appealing to customers.
Evaluate how the reselling feature would impact customer purchasing behavior.

Implementation Approach

What is the customer perception of reselling tickets on TodayTix?
Do customers see value in the reselling feature?
Do customers trust the reselling feature and understand the associated risks?
What factors influence customer trust in the reselling feature?

Results: Data Interpretation

The data from the interview was categorized and analyzed to create the following empathy maps and affinity diagrams to make the data from the interviews more pallatible and understandable.

Relisting - Empathy maps

Relisting - Affinity diagram

Results: Data Representation of Users

Based on the interview data from the participants and the affinity diagram the following personas were created to represent four different types of target user categories. Each persona was created by combining habits, user behavior and preferences from the interview participants and merging it from previous personas to take a stab at making secondary personas.

Secondary personas developed

Ticket relisting flow

I was worried that the flow core functionality of relisting and the implication to the business. My main concern was whether having a chance to sell and communicating that to the user in a way woudl deter them from using the feature.

The relisting journey and logic

Exploring wireframes

I designed a couple rounds of wireframes to drive conversation and get the right understanding of the data that was needed to pull and present to the users.

Initial wireframing to kick off the conversation

Redesigning to express more language around pricing

Higher fidelity explorations relisting

The solve

I was thrilled to design the solution for relisting and eagerly started implementing it. Adding a more branded and visually appealing experience was one of my key goals. I also planned for it to be a web experience, ensuring that it could be seamlessly utilized across all our white label brands. By doing so, I envisioned providing users with a consistent and engaging ticket resale process while aligning with our brand's identity.

version 0.1 explorations relisting

AI: Pivot, the plot thickens

During the middle of March 2022, the tech industry was experiencing a significant surge in AI advancements and product launches. Amidst this dynamic landscape, my company made the unexpected decision to pivot the solution for relisting. This news hit me hard, as I had poured my heart and soul into this project, investing countless hours of work, effort, and dedication.

From the initial stages of conceptualization, I had envisioned a seamless and user-centric ticket resale process, aiming to provide our users with the best experience possible. I conducted extensive research, delving into user preferences and pain points, and brainstormed creative solutions on whiteboards, iterating and refining the design based on valuable feedback from colleagues and stakeholders.

Witnessing the project being tabled felt like a setback and left me feeling disheartened, especially considering the passion and commitment I had put into crafting a solution that I believed would bring immense value to our users and the company. However, I realized that such situations are part of the natural course of product development and sometimes involve tough decisions for strategic reasons.

What I learned from this

Despite the initial disappointment, I chose to embrace this change as an opportunity for growth and learning. I took the time to reflect on the valuable insights gained during the project's development and the lessons learned from the collaborative cross-functional lean UX sessions and user research.

Finally, Relisting revisited

Months later, the company revisited the relisting project with a smaller scope, and to my delight, my work was not in vain. The previous design iterations and research proved to be valuable assets, enabling a more streamlined and efficient implementation of the relisting feature.

The experience of seeing the relisting project evolve from its initial conception to its eventual implementation taught me invaluable lessons about the iterative nature of design and the need to adapt to changing circumstances in the fast-paced tech industry. It reinforced the importance of resilience and open-mindedness as a designer, embracing change as an opportunity for improvement rather than a setback. Today, I am proud to witness the relisting feature in action, providing users with the flexibility they need and contributing to the growth of our platform. This journey has been a transformative one, reaffirming my dedication to delivering exceptional user experiences and driving innovation within the company.

Relisting prototype

Small footprint of relisting prototype

version 0.2 final flow of relisting