Ticket booking platform pivoting to the new normal- UX Research Case Study

A UX Research to understand the behavioral shift that the pandemic has brought and its impact on Bookevents.

10 min readMay 17, 2021

Recently I have taken a UX UI course by growth school (growthschool.io) and I was given a product problem statement and a research problem statement to boost the business of Bookevents app during the pandemic.

Introduction

Along with all other areas of human life, the coronavirus pandemic made a massive impact on the entertainment industry all over the world. As an effective way of preventing the spread of coronavirus, most countries were under lockdown. In India, public gatherings were banned and people were instructed to stay in their homes. Theaters were closed, events were canceled or postponed indefinitely. Offices were making their employees work from home.

The Problem Statement

The pandemic has put a halt to all live events and movie screenings. Bookevents, an event booking app has seen a complete wipeout of their bookings. As a UX designer, Bookevents has asked you to come up with a UX for pivoting their business in this situation.

After understanding the product problem statement I framed the 5W’s questions in reference to the problem statement. I was trying to define the core of the product through a series of basic questions.

i. WHO: Who is/are the target user(s) (demographics and psychographics)?

ii. WHAT: What people are actually doing in this pandemic situation if not going for movie screenings or live events?

iii. WHEN: When people might use the app, as well as daily routines and rhythms of behavior while accessing the app? When will users gain the trust of booking the events?

iv. WHERE: Where can we improve on existing patterns and solutions?

v. WHY: Why is there a complete wipeout of bookings?

After coming up with these questions I was curious to dig deep into the problem and its causes. I moved further into the research.

Research Problem Statement

Bookevents is preparing for the ‘new normal’ of events taking place. As a UX designer, you first want to understand the behavioral shift that the pandemic has brought and its impact on attending live events & movie screenings. Plan research to identify new entertainment patterns emerging for the business.

Desk research

As I started with the desk research I found some interesting details,
here are a few key insights.

Insights

With the closure of malls, cinema halls, theaters, parks, etc, the biggest growth was seen in OTT Platforms ( 33%)
54% of Indian entertainment lovers are eager to get back to cinemas within 15–90 days after the lockdown is lifted while the rest would prefer to step out after 90 days.
98% of Indians expect cinemas to implement strict safety and hygiene measures to ensure a safe movie-watching experience.
In recent studies around the globe, it has been reported that a maximum loss of about more than $666 million till April 2020 is noted in the event industry, due to the cancellation of events worldwide and have 85.9 million jobs at stake.
63% of respondents claim that they are using this free time to upgrade their skills and majorly focusing on virtual technology and online platforms for organizing events.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put a hold on not just movie releases and screening but also production, which has impacted the business of the online ticketing site.

Bookevents has a multi-door revenue model, Few of them as below:

Percentage of sales — This is the topmost source of revenue which contributes around 60% of the total revenue. This comes from internet handling fees and a gap in ticket booking. The company charges a comfort fee over and above the price of the tickets. That is what Bookevents keeps.

2. Advertising revenue — revenue from banners, launches, and promotions. Keeping with increasing traffic… Pricing increases.

3. Money from partners — partnership with providers like Visa, American Express, etc

More details on the desk research.

Primary Research

After understanding the findings from my desk research, I narrowed down different kinds of users to get the most insights and then defined the target group of users.

Next, I made a survey for screening and circulated it on my social media handles before moving ahead with 1:1 Interviews.

I received a total of — 50 responses. Following are some of the snippets of the responses that I received.

Insights from the survey:

About 90% of the target user group age for BMS is 18–34 years.
About 96% of the target user group visited the cinema about 6 months to a year ago.
Around 58% of the users once or twice a month go to the cinema.
84% of the responders often use BMS to book movie/live event tickets.
The last two mentioned tables can be read as — 58% are not at all happy with the convenience fee whereas 84% like the platform due to ease of booking.
More details of the survey.

Moving further into 1:1 user interviews.

I had conducted 8 semi-structured interviews with the above-mentioned target user group to gain a deeper understanding of the scenario. I was curious about the answers to the following question:

Q. What is your average day during this lockdown look like?
Q. How do you pass your leisure time under quarantine?

I consolidated the interview data & formed user groups from the insights.

As I interviewed the users I found people also spend a great amount of time gaming and watching live streams, so I researched about it

Here are some key insights:

3/8 people were spending a great deal of time on gaming and live streaming along with OTT platforms. I wanted to understand the market size of the streaming industry and its trends before and during the pandemic.
The global video streaming market size was valued at $ 50.11 billion in 2020. (grandviewresearch)
Between January and August 2020, the number of live-streamed events hosted increased by 1468% (Uscreen, 2020)
The video streaming market is predicted to be worth $124.6 billion by 2025. (Techjury, 2020)
Companies that use video features grow revenue 49 % faster than non-video users. (Wordstream, 2020)
Subscription-based video-on-demand revenue is predicted to grow by 10.7% each year to yield a market volume of $85,735 million by 2025. (Statista)

From the above data, It is evident that the streaming industry has enormous potential.

Analyzing the users

After taking up the user interviews I have condensed the information and formed 4 groups and empathy maps based on their behavioral insights.

Personas

I grouped similar behavior and pain points of 8 users and built these personas to help me in the ideation process to keep the user in mind easily.

Personas and empathy maps helped me identify the user’s pain points

Top Pain Points of the users:

The main concern of the users is the safety parameters now and would trust only brands for the same.
Users don’t like to miss events or other shows because they couldn’t get the necessary information on time.
The users have to go to multiple platforms to find out all the required information about any show.
The users feel that they get a lot of information about the show but there isn’t enough information about the place.
Food is an important choice that users have to make while booking their tickets and a pandemic will affect their choice as only limited places can be trusted now.

I tried to reframe the problem statement which reflects the user’s frustrations based on the pain points identified above. To do so I used the How Might We ( HMW) design activity to rephrase the known challenges along with newer insights from users as a design question. This might help me view these problems from a different perspective.

Few questions to help me reframe the problems

1. How might we ensure safety to users and build trust again to step outside for entertainment?

2. How might we provide them with the necessary information based on their personal preferences?

3. How might we provide them with the required information about the place?

4. How might we ensure safety to the nearby restaurant recommendations provided on the app?

5. How might we help users make a choice quickly?

Users have complained that they have to go back and forth to compare multiple options before booking their tickets so providing an option to compare two places based on the selected filters may help the user.

6. How might we solve the problem of seating arrangements with friends?

The following questions are an opportunity to pivot the business based on the new emerging patterns for entertainment.

1. How might we encourage OTT platform users to use the ticket booking app during the pandemic?

2. How might we attract people who watch live streams into the ticket booking app?

I was trying to understand the new emerging patterns for entertainment during the time of the pandemic. When I actually started talking to the users, I understood that most of the users were interested in going out rather than getting more options for in-home entertainment and safety was their main concern. Also, it is the time when the theatres are about to reopen in most of the cities so considering all these points, I decided to solve the identified challenges from the users.

Wireframing

Based on the identified pain points and new entertainment patterns I have suggested a few additions to the existing ticket booking app considering user's concerns and newly emerged behavior patterns.

To assure safety

The main concern of the Users is safety and hence showing them ( through auto-playing an illustrated video)what measures are taken to ensure their safety will help them develop trust again.
To ensure that people who follow the necessary steps for safety are only allowed in the theatres.
Users will be directed to this panel directly after clicking on “Proceed” before selecting theatres.

Showing details of the venue

Most of the Users feel they get enough info about the movie but not about the Place. Compared to the existing screen, this layout will thus allow them to see the required details on one screen without wasting much time on getting info from other places.
A new feature of adding reviews about the places has also been added for informed decision making.
Small details like Images of the venue, reviews about the place, capacity are added to install a sense of safety and to provide more information about the place.

Seating arrangements and nearby safe restaurants in the new normal.

The New seating layout that I have proposed is slightly different from the one that is getting popular in the new normal. It will allow at least two people who’re going for the movie together to sit together unlike the other new layouts because the main reason why people are still willing to go out for the movies is to enjoy other people’s company.

Nearby Safe Places to Visit: As many users considered other activities around the theatre while planning their outing, this feature will help them explore their options and pre-book their choice of cafe, restaurant, or even plan a takeaway.

Rewarding Loyal Users

Users are expecting to be rewarded for being loyal to the platform. I have come with the idea of in-app currency Bcoins(Bookevents Coins). These coins are earned as the user books more tickets and can redeem them for future bookings. This rewarding system might train new users to stick to this platform too.

I have mentioned streaming and seminars above which I will explain in the following.

For newly emerged entertainment pattern

Integrating OTT / VOD into the ticket booking platform.

(Source: googlecloud, Business, themindstudios

Based on the above info I would suggest starting building a live streaming platform as it takes just 2 months and then eventually integrates on-demand features into it.

Integrating live streaming features on the platform.

Viewers sending Bcoins will get a prioritized response from the streamer and hence encouraging people to send more coins.

Next step

I am curious to take feedback from the users and iterate the wireframes. I also wanted to dig deep into Video-on-demand platforms (Ex: Netflix) and online seminars and workshops. Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to give it all but I am happy to have learned a lot through this project.

Please drop a comment below, open for any kind of feedback or other suggestions.