The problem within the concert ticket industry
Many fans are frustrated with their current purchasing experience. They have accepted the fact that they are up against bots or scalpers, and will ultimately have to choose between paying a premium on the secondary market or not going at all. The goal was to provide a fair and systematic approach that distributes tickets to music fans, with a focus on shows that are anticipated to sell out instantly.
Summary of key user insights
The process is social
Similar sharing and purchasing flow are found across different friend groups
No Resale Tickets
Resale tickets are perceived to be overpriced
Deprioritize Cost for Friends
Users overlook price of ticket if their friend is interested in the event
How Do We Address Music Fan's Concerns?
Msuicmob is a conceptual app aiming to increase concert attendance by providing a fan-centred environment and a hands-off purchasing flow to the concerts of popular artists
Efficient Sharing
Refined information hierarchy and music playback provide essential details at a glance. If a user was to share details with a friend, this page is all they need.
Social Media Lite
For many fans, attending a concert is a social event. By being able to see which concerts or artists your friends like, social proofing is created. This increases the perceived value of the concert ticket.
Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Concert Teams help friends coordinate when buying tickets together. Each user can vote on budget and seat preferences prior to tickets going on sale.
When tickets drop, tickets that fit these preferences will be held for a limited time to be purchased by the group.
Let's Get Into The Details
The State Of Concert Tickets
Secondary research showed that problems existed outside of the ticketing app. Based on this article, tickets were limited and sold out by design in order to earn more money through the resale process.
As a solo Designer, not only would I need to provide an experience that puts the user first; I need to provide value to the ticketing industry that is more appealing than the earnings gained from their reselling fees.
Understanding The Current Process
To search for pain points, five (5) user interviews were conducted with participants that matched the following requirements from my screener survey:
Age 20-29
Have purchased a concert ticket before
Painpoints: Cost, Time, or Family & Friends Could Not Attend
I needed a detailed understanding of how a user currently goes from initially hearing about a concert, to purchasing a ticket. This information was organized using an Affinity Map.
Deprioritize Cost for Friends
According to the survey, the biggest roadblock that stopped fans from attending a concert was the cost of a ticket. However, user interviews helped contextualize this data. Although cost was important, users were willing to overlook the price if their friend was also interested in the event.
No Resale Tickets
Fans perceive resale tickets to be overpriced. If they do not have to pay the premium that comes with resale tickets, fans believe that they got a relatively good deal.
The survey shows that most people made purchases through Ticketmaster or from the Concert Venue’s/Artist’s Website, which are primary sources for tickets.
The Process is Social
A similar sharing and purchasing flow can be observed across different friend groups.
Fans share concert details through social media. When purchasing a ticket as a group, one person will complete the purchase and the group will pay back later. Just like how a concert is a social event, so is the process of getting there.
Who Are We Designing For?
To gain the perspective of the end-user, I initially created two user personas: an Avid Concert Goer and a Budget Friendly Fan.
In the end, I decided to focus on the Avid Concert Goer. The Budget Friendly persona heavily emphasized cost, which was beyond my control. I was looking to bring value to fans that were already buying tickets.
How Might We?
Help users easily find, share, and coordinate concerts details with friends,
Increase the perceived value of a concert ticket without increasing its cost, and
Get concert tickets into the hands of real fans before they enter the secondary market.
What is a Concert Team?
This feature allows users to coordinate budget and seat preferences with friends prior to ticket release. Once tickets go on sale, tickets that fit these preferences will be held for the group to purchase for a limited time.
This incorporates a social media presence to social proof events with the intention to increase the perceived value of tickets. It also distributes tickets to fans in a raffle system similar to Yeezy drops.
Meeting Business Goals
The main idea that stuck out to me during ideation was Concert Teams, annotated as “Join team: help coordinate a day to do something”. It was not very detailed at the time, however, this concept expanded into my final concept.
How would Concert Teams help businesses?
Creates an incentive for fans to go to a concert through social proofing. The goal is to get fans to go to more concerts, not pay more for fewer concerts.
Helps real fans get access to tickets. Fans get access to tickets after inputting their seat and budget preference. This added friction will deter scalpers and bots. This will mend the relationship between ticketing companies and consumers.
Provides consumer interest data to ticketing companies for ticket pricing and seating logistics.
Creating a Sacrificial Prototype
With an idea and inspiration in place, it was time to create a sacrificial prototype. I needed to see if my ideas would be understood when placed in front of users.
This was an iterative process. I would complete the wireframes and then go back to user flows when I noticed that something did not work as intended. The “Creating Concert Team Flow” and the “Payment Flow” were especially difficult.
Adding the Concert Teams feature meant that an entire system would have to be built around it. Users would also need to Add Friends, Reserve Seats, Authorize Payment of the Team, and many more.
Design Process
I wanted the app to mimic the sense of awe and community found at a concert. The app defaults to Dark Mode to emulate the grunge vibe.
With the different states of certain graphics such as Users (attending, pending, decline) and Seat Map (not selected, selected - minority, selected - majority), a design system was created to clarify and centralize information.
Testing with Users & Design Decisions
Two (2) round of usability testing was completed to produce the final prototype. Many changes were made along the way.
Users understood the general concept of a Concert Team, however, were unsure about the details. Additional information was presented on three (3) onboarding screens that appear upon the user's first interaction with the Concert Team's Feature.
The Concert Team feature was a new concept and users were unlikely to click in. The flow observed during usability testing showed that users would share details when prompted to "Create a Concert Team".
Final designs resulted in moving the Create Team icon near the share button and adding an entry point when Share was clicked.
There was a lack of system feedback once users input their seat and budget preferences. My first design consisted of a slider and interactive map, which limit the amount of information which could be displayed.
The old design was overhauled and changed into detailed radio buttons where interactions would trigger a response from the seat map.
When it was time for users to choose seats, they had a hard time differentiating between recommended and regular seats. There was a lack of emphasis on how the recommended seats were catered to their team.
To create an association, the profile pictures of all the members of the group were added when tickets were sorted by Concert Group.
What I Would Do Differently
Complete a round of usability testing using wireframes. This would allow for more efficient changes to be done to the hi-fi prototype.
Complete usability testing through a quantitive approach by asking participants to completed timed tasks and determining success rate.
If I had more time, I would love to consult with people in the industry and see the reasoning behind certain decisions. Not everything can be solved with a screen. Some are systematic issues and I would love to dive deeper and learn why they are in place.
Metrics for Success
Users are clicking on artists or concerts that are liked by their friends.
Increased total number of concerts attended by users.
Compare the number of users who created a Concert Team vs. the number of users who followed through and purchased tickets for the team.
Implementing Solution
Although this was a conceptual app, I can see it having a big impact if implemented into current ticketing platforms such as Ticketmaster.
I imagine a reserved section can implement this feature during the presale. This will give Ticketmaster enough user information to price tickets for public sale.
The features that I propose should bring the focus back on giving fans a great concert experience in hopes that they can attend more and more concerts. In this case, both the fans and the companies win.