As a lover of entertainment, I’ve always been a huge fan of live performances, whether it be music or acting. I had the opportunity to do a concept mobile app for Samuel French and build intuitive experiences that will engage customers and help them find live performances in their area.
During a duration of 2 weeks, I developed wireframes, personas, user flows, clickable prototypes, and mockups for the mobile app. All design decisions were made to take the hassle out of users wanting to watch a Samuel French licensed performance.
Samuel French is the leading stage play publisher and has the largest collection of scripts for playwrights. Though they value small production theatre, their website misses out on an opportunity to expose their user to live shows.
Currently, the client has no existing solution addressing the task of providing details on live productions licensed by Samuel French. Their “Now Playing” page is non-existent on mobile.
Not only does the website make it extremely difficult to the find the Now Playing page, once a user is on the page, they are given a plethora of shows located in certain places, but it gives no option to visit that venue's website or a link to find tickets. It leads back to the script product page.
To build the trust and theater credibility of Samuel French, create a mobile and lifestyle content solution that resonates with a new audience.
Empower users to browse for live small productions shows in their area and help them find the information they need.
Support amateur theatre by making plays more accessible to users and encourage browsing.
Help users to easily maneuver through their show browsing experience
Find out if users on Samuelfrench.com have a big interest in seeing live shows.
What habits users have when searching for a live play/musical (Do they look at ratings? Search for a name first or would they rather have a broad selection?)
Identify pain points in live show selection
I started off this project looking to identify our target user base to get a better grasp on who I was designing the solution for. Initially, I was not able to get in contact with any current Samuel French users, so I broadened the scope and conducted a 20+ person survey to better understand people's ticket purchasing habits. Through the results, I discovered that:
| Why?
People find themselves searching for live productions because the show is relevant to their interest, it’s in their area, or want an in-person experience.
| What’s important?
Price, deals, and venue location were found to be important factors when selecting a live show. Users were also influenced by detailed plot descriptions or finding information about plays that they’ve never heard of.
| How and When?
Users primarily use mobile when searching for live productions. People actively browse for shows on the weekends, and when they’ve heard about it from a friend or online.
| Issues?
Users dislike being excited about a show only to find out that it’s really expensive or sold out. Also, they believe it takes too many taps and finger movement because of the buttons being structured all over the place.
Susan is a social butterfly that loves to experience new things. She often organizes hangouts and is always on the lookout for the latest musicals. When she has a great experience with a show, she loves to share with her friends via social media.
As an aspiring actor, Richard gets his inspiration from the shows he attends. Browsing for shows happens whenever he has an opportunity to whip out his phone. When he finds something interesting to watch, he immediately looks for tickets and pricing.
I explored a variety of designs to find opportunities to enhance the live show browsing experience, favoriting/saving shows faster, and booking tickets easier.
I spent a few days working on design critiques with my professors and receiving feedback from my cohort. Validating the different flows and designs through user testing helped me become confident in the approach i've taken to improve the show browsing experience.
The solution splits the options to either Search by Plays or Search by Musicals. To make navigation effortless, I included a spine navigation to make it easier to remember where you are. Everything is at a thumb's reach, especially for users who have large phones.
There is an abundance of Samuel French licensed shows, so stumbling onto one that may interest you is highly likely. In one swipe, a user is allowed to favorite a show and a specific show time. For the Organizer, this helps keep track of all interested shows and one glance, and with the spine navigation, it allows the user to continuously browse and easily favorite.
According to the survey results and feedback from the interviews, many users dislike being excited about a show only to find out that there are no relevant seats available or sold out. Below each showtime, I included the icons indicating how many tickets are possibly available.
If this was a real product that I had potential to launch with time and resources, I would love to conduct research with a working prototype and improve UI animations to deliver a better experience. I would like to validate my assumptions with actual Samuel French users and see how the app would evolve with user generated content (reviews, comments, etc).
Some questions that I had were:
• Is this a Minimum Viable Product? What should be added/taken out?
• Will users be more efficient with the gestures in this app or without?
• How can I help creators be able to list their own show on the app? What is the user flow for that?
This project was a stretch for me: I didn't have enough time and resources to find enough Samuel French users to better understand their perspective. But I got to play around with Principle and I enjoyed executing my hobby into a conceptual product.