Fandango
How might one app support several entertainment needs—movies, concerts, and live theater?
The Team: Anne Everett, Matt Trahan, Karen Viado
We were given the task to imagine if Fandango, the movie ticket company, had plans to grow their business and include live events. What would that look like in their mobile app?
Key Skills: STRATEGY; INTERACTION DESIGN
Research
Target Audience: Millennials who go to live entertainment events.
Competitive Analysis of Live Event Ticket Sellers and Other Secondary Research
Surveys
6 Intercept Interviews at “Hello, Dolly!” show, AMC theater, and Hot Tix.
9 Interviews
Buying tickets for movies has become similar to buying tickets for live events like concerts and theater shows.
Fandango can offer a way to extend that passion for movies to concerts and live shows, and make the ticket-buying experience as seamless as possible for all. Not only that, but it can connect people’s love for movies to other entertainment sources.
A Movie Experience Often Transcends the Film Itself.
My downstairs neighbor has been listening to the “A Star is Born” soundtrack non-stop ever since she saw the movie. She would probably want to know if there was a Lady Gaga concert coming to town.
Singers are actors. Actors are singers. Movies become theater shows and theater shows move to the big screen. The entertainment world is interconnected and Fandango could be the app that brings them together for users.
Apps like Spotify already provide ways to buy tickets for your favorite bands. This would be a step in the same direction.
The Current User Flow:
What are the current pain points in buying live event tickets?
We focused on the experience of one of our research participants (Kira), but her experience was echoed by the majority of the participants.
Discover: How can Kira find concerts she wants to go to?
“I find out about show from so many places!””
From newsletters to social media to word-of-mouth, participants used a plethora of means to discover events. But one thing almost everyone had in common was that they relied on information to come to them—people rarely searched for the next time Book of Mormon or The 1975 were coming to town.
Buy: How can Kira buy tickets to concerts without sticker shock and confusion from obscure and hidden fees?
The number one complaint about buying tickets to live events from any online seller? FEES! The amount of different fees caused a lot of anger with participants, and although they were resigned to it, the fees put a damper on their experience.
Connect & Share: How can Kira share these events with friends and family?
“I love the energy of a crowd at a concert.”
We found that a big part of going out and attending live events is to share the experience with others—friends, partners, and even strangers at shows. People wanted to feel connected to others. They wanted to share the positive experiences with their loved ones or they had feelings of community with people who loved the same things they did. Either way, most people went to events with to be around other people.
Ideation & Strategy
Design Studio: 11 Designers
Concept Evaluation based on:
1. Must Haves/Should Haves/Could Haves
2. Effort x Impact Matrix
We first evaluated and chose the Must Haves out of the ideas gathered. This still left us with many options, so we did a secondary evaluation based on which solutions could be implemented quickly, cheaply, and easily by Fandango.
Since a love for movies is so important to Fandango as a brand, we wanted to make the new features work seamlessly with the Fandango app’s original purpose of selling movie tickets.
Prototyping
Prototype made in Marvel by Matt Trahan
To introduce current users to the new live event ticket-buying options, we created an onboarding flow where users could add their preferences for concerts and theater. If they didn’t fill out their preferences, Fandango would recommend events based on their ticket history.
We made it clear to users what the fees Fandango charged were and why. However, people were used to paying a lot of fees for other sites, so the impact was negligible and user testing showed that people weren’t very interested in the Fee Transparency features.
To encourage sharing experiences in a simple way, we created an “Ideas” section, giving users event ideas for nights with partners, kids, etc.
The New Fandango User Journey
The user journey for buying tickets to live events became less painful. In addition, we added social media sharing buttons on event pages so users could easily notify and encourage others to join them at the events. Kira’s friends wouldn’t find out about a concert on Instagram when it was too late to buy tickets. They could buy early and join her.
Since users buy tickets the day of the event to several months earlier, they would need a place to store and easily access their e-tickets for all types of events. We created a ticket section where they could do so.
Reiteration
Usability Testing: 8 Users
Moving forward: We’d like to take another look at the ideas we left on the Should Haves list, especially the ideas related to encouraging shared experiences. We could have pushed for more innovation when it came to connecting people at events through their shared interests. Maybe we would make a message board where Fandango-users could post meetups at a Beyonce concert or spread the word about a local band.