SkipLine
Events done better
SkipLine is a project designed to assist event hosts and attendees to manage their ticket and merchandise sales and purchases. Over the course of four weeks, my team of five and I worked in harmony to address a common problem in the events industry -- a well-organized management system of ticket and merchandise sales, in unison. Along with researching assistance, my main roles were wireframing and prototyping.
"How might we attend to both user groups without compromising their individual experience. "
Challenge
The main challenge we faced as a team was creating a uniformed design that tackled the problems for both of our user types. Event hosts had different concerns than event attendees. The question of the month was, how might we attend to both user groups without compromising their individual experience.
Competitive Analysis
Before we jumped into the field, we took a look at the field by doing a competitive analysis of the leading events and ticket management apps. Some of our competitors were Eventbrite, Meetup, Ticketleap, and Facebook Events. Each app provided something that the others did not. For example, We found that Facebook Events is great for marketing events and getting the word out, but lacks in managing ticket sales, and RSVPs. Or, Eventbrite has a great platform for selling event tickets but does not have a platform for selling event merchandise.
User Interviews
We interviewed four potential users. Two of which were event hosts and two that were event attendees. We wanted to know what were their pain points when it came to buying or selling tickets to an event. On the event hosting side, we learned more about the process of putting together an event from start to finish. On the event attendee side, we learned how they went about purchasing and sharing their purchased tickets. Both seemed like a hassle for the users.
"I have to use three different apps to do different things. It'll be nice to have it all in one place. "
-St. Fort
Discovery
For our event hosts, we discovered that they used multiple platforms to perform different tasks and wanted a space where they can do everything they needed to assure a wonderful event. For our attendees, we discovered that sharing and sending tickets as a gift to their friends and loved ones was practically rocket science, there were far too many steps to take which left alot of room for error.
The Problem
As previously stated, Event hosts had different concerns than those of the attendees. Their problems became ours to solve. For our event organizers, we needed to design a platform that supports ticket, merchandise, and concession purchases and manages event entry as well as sales analytics. For our attendees, we needed to design a smooth journey for finding events, purchasing, and distributing tickets.
Initial Designs
Once we fully dissected the problems of our users, we planned out a user flow. What is the easiest way for our users to complete their tasks at hand? We all had wonderful ideas, sketches, and wireframes. We voted on each design, took bits and pieces of each of one to collectively build our main screens.
Final Product
We were able to address and solve all of our users’ problems with one cohesive application which we call SkipLine. This is what our final designed looked like
Event attendees
Event Organizers
Takeaways
SkipLine was fun to design. The project challenged me to not just think about our project manager, but to also empathize with two completely different sets of users with polar opposite problems. There are many solutions to a problem and your first solution may not always be the best one. I enjoyed iterating and redesigning because I can feel our work evolving into something stronger and better. I’d like to see SkipLine grow into a one-stop-shop for event organizers and event-goers. The goal is to make the lives of our users easier, if SkipLine is all they’ll need to organize events, sell and purchase event tickets and merchandise then we’ve hit a major milestone in the events industry.