Mobilizing Box Office Ticketing
How to provide box office clients with an intuitive way to sell tickets and enhance the fan support operation experience via a point-of-sales app.
Ticketmaster Enterprise
Desktop
Tablet
2018 – 2020
Design Lead
Planning, User Research, User Flow, Sketching, Wireframing, Visual Design, Interaction Design
TM1 Sales enables venue clients to use a mobile point-of-sales app to sell and deliver digital tickets and solve fans’ issues anywhere inside or outside of the venue. As a design lead, I led the ideation, strategy, and rapid prototyping with short feedback loops.
Challenges
How might we create a simple and easy to use tool for box office agents to sell tickets, enhance fan support operations, and increase revenue?
As the live event industry embraces digital trends, there is a need for solutions for fans and the box office staff. When I joined the team, there was a basic selling flow was in place. However, there was a lack of functionality that blocked clients from adopting the app.
| DISCOVER
Client Research
We often conduct field research by observing and talking with clients in their environment. As part of our feedback loop with clients, we have frequent client calls and receive messages directly from client representatives.
The goal of the user research is to specifically learn the clients’ wants, pain points, desired areas of improvement, and key functionalities the clients needs in order to make their jobs easier.
Field Research
Remote Client Interview
Synthesizing the Findings
| DEFINE PERSONA
Who are we designing for?
| DEFINE USER JOURNEY
Adam’s Journey for the day of the event
Based upon data from client interviews, field research, and user reviews, I created a user journey map to visualize experiences Adam has when he is interacting with fans using legacy ticketing systems. This helped me expose pain points and areas for improvement in the app along Adam’s entire user journey. By using the journey map, I identified various touch-points by intent and task, including aspects such as emotions and expectations.
| DEFINE PROBLEMS
Key Findings
Lack of functionalities led to losing revenue.
The fan doesn’t get to see the seat location and does not capture information about ticket purchasers.
The long waiting line is a big pain point.
The system is difficult to learn and use.
NFL clients need customer support functions at the gate.
Sending daily reports using a spreadsheet is inefficient.
The checkout process is not clear due to the lack of labels.
| DEFINE ROADMAP
Feedback Prioritization
I worked closely with the product owner and we prioritized the feedback to define the roadmap. Based on the feedback we received from research, we quantified the key findings and prioritized their importance. In addition, we sent out the key findings list to four clients and requested them to prioritize the order based on their needs. Feedback prioritization helped the breakdown of the larger scale of work to a small scale to fit in an agile process and helped the team to understand the high-level goal and long-term vision.
| DEVELOP STRUCTURE
Information architecture
I refined the concept using research outcomes and our business goals and created a high-level information architecture to visualize the structure. This process enabled me to plan the navigation system and easily transform it into a wireframe. The navigation is structured based on users’ tasks, such as sales, orders, and reports.
| DEVELOP INTERACTION
Wireframing
| DELIVER FINAL DESIGN
ITERATIVE DESIGN SOLUTION
I have continuously iterated the design to well-defined pixel perfect and polished versions based on the latest internal design system and user feedback. The final design includes a responsive design that can be operated on a desktop and a tablet. Once the agent sells the tickets, the fan receives their ticket via their phone.
Design Exploration – Dark Mode
Selling Tickets Using Interactive Seat Map
The ticket seller signs in to their account that leads to the TM1 Sales main page. The user searches the event from the hero, list, or searching for the event. The interactive seat map enables the user to select the seat using “Find Best Available” or tapping seats on the map. By selecting the map, it added to the cart which streamed line the purchasing experience.
Gate Resolution and Re-issuing the Tickets
Sending End of Day Shift Report
| DELIVER & IMPACT
What clients say
Overall, each client praised the ease of use of TM1 Sales and help them increase revenue as well as quality of customer support.
“I love that we could rapidly deploy TM1 Sales with someone who had never utilized the system before and within three to five minutes they could help sell tickets or clear the line. Can’t stop raving about the simplicity and how intuitive it is.”
Ryan Turley
Guest Services, Riverside Municipal Auditorium
“TM1 Sales is the type of tool we’ve been waiting for. A mobile app is an amazing way to bring our venue’s box office right to the guest, and tickets quickly onto their smartphones.”
Adam Frey
Assistant Box Office Manager, Fox Performing Arts Center
“Our market is comfortable [with technology] and willing to try something like TM1 Sales with the expectation is that it should work, and it should be cool. This product accomplishes both. Another benefit that can’t be understated is how easy it is to train and getting someone to sell a ticket. That is huge.”
Malcolm Rogel
Senior Director of Ticket Operations, Seattle Mariners
How Clients are using in a real setting
Key Results
Total Adoption Number Per Quarter
Success Story
Seattle Mariners The Mariners Mobile Box Office Proves to Be a Home Run
Fox Performing Arts Center Fox Rocks Ticket Sales & Upsells with TM1 Sales