Alex Hewitt
/
ux designer
Movie Tickets & Schedules
Palace Amusement has been operating cinemas in Jamaica for over 100 years uncontested, and has been very slow in growing their online platform. A conceptual solution aims to make movie-going frictionless at a time when financial struggles are reaching fever pitch.
Entire product design from research to conception, visualisation and testing
Approximately 7 weeks
The frustrating nature of the online experience often leaves the website unusable, resulting in long lines at the theatre ticket booth and disgruntled patrons.
Create a mobile app with a refined purchasing process to leverage existing kiosk hardware, promote greater transparency and create a smoother experience all round.
Palace Amusement has had financial issues for a while and at times struggles to attract audiences without blockbuster releases. Tight budget constraints might explain why their website design seems to have not been updated in years (as of 2021).
Noisy navigation and no clear calls-to-action on the landing. Clicking a movie takes you to IMDB’s website instead of to ticket buying.
Direct but inconvenient: no search, no “Movies” nav option, and checkout process is not immune to breaking.
Poor formatting of schedule has users manually parse for desired info, and looking at the movies under “Cinemas” omits the days movies are available.
Avid movie-goers often bear the pains of the process associated with being a customer of Palace Amusement, but those pains are not soon forgotten.
I hate that when I try to buy tickets it tells me I can’t buy a certain amount, without saying how many tickets are available.
I wish I could reserve seating so I wouldn’t have to get to the theatre so early.
Viewing the schedules online is not great when it’s all cluttered in a table like that.
I wish I could buy tickets online without creating an account. What’s the point of it anyway?
Users are unable to see how many seats/tickets are available before or during purchase.
Users need an alternative to waiting in long queues and getting bad seats or no entry.
Frustration with online experience is sometimes a deterrent to seeing movies altogether.
I’m used to being able to easily buy tickets and reserve seating online abroad, so I find it frustrating that we still lag behind.
26 y/o
|
Grad Student
Introverted
Well-read
Well-traveled
Seamless remote buying
Easy access with digital ticket
Reserve seating
Easy way to tell movie schedule
Waiting in line
The need to be early
Can't reserve seating online
Unable to tell ticket availability
The online thing can be intimidating, but if it means a better overall experience then people will adapt.
43 y/o
|
Auto-mechanic
Family-oriented
Blue-collar
Tech-cautious
Good experience for kids
Managing multiple tickets for family entry
Very simple, easy processes
Website is hard to navigate
Not very tech-savvy
Viewing schedule table
Seating family together can be a challenge unless early
As Palace Amusement operates a local monopoly it made sense to see how industry giants in competitive markets position themselves, and how their digital products serve their user-base.
British cinema company with very polished digital products that are effortless to use.
The second-largest theatre circuit in America offers exceptionally organised content and scheduling.
The priority is having a focused flow, where content displayed is useful and concise, with only the key actions required to achieve the user’s goals.
Clear availability on the home page with option to search.
Showing the steps upfront and adding needed visibility.
See what’s showing for the week based on where you’re located.
It was imperative to get user feedback at the earliest stages of ideation with lo-fi prototypes and userflows. While we were on the right track, there were still some issues being overlooked.
Not enough relevant ticket data at key stages
Booking process has too many steps
Unable to share or save tickets in-app
Schedule interactions feel clunky and unintuitive.
Common UI patterns and interactions were used to produce a familiar and intuitive experience. Extra effort went into ensuring users were gracefully funnelled into manageable steps by limiting expected inputs.
No need to print or screen-grab email confirmations, it’s all here in the app, on or offline, along with your purchase history.
No unformatted tables here (good riddance), but every thing remains visible in an unencumbered way.
“Overall it’s pretty slick, minimalist and very intuitive. It’s a major improvement on what currently exists.”
Users were very receptive of the enhanced experience. It was a modern take on what currently feels like an under-maintained website, including aspects that some users have come to associate with global cinema franchises.
Unfortunately, the true impact of this design could not be measured as it is only a concept solution to what may be a problem that's not feasible to address at the moment given Palace Amusement's financial situation.
Following a true design thinking process and producing multiple UX artefacts resulted in a highly streamlined project. Issues were quickly resolved by referring to previously established sources of truth.
There are a few minor UI issues that need to be addressed, namely contrast and making interactable elements more overt.
Documentation should be viewed as a map towards a destination as opposed to keeping track of what's been done. Artefacts are a refinement of gathered data meant to be kept close to the solutioning process throughout.
