Transforming the Ticketing Industry

Brand: Ticketmaster

Role: UX Lead

Problem

The existing event and ticketing technology was outdated and fragmented across multiple platforms, resulting in a slow and interdependent process. Clients frequently relied on Ticketmaster support staff to address issues or perform tasks incompatible with the current platform, leading to significant time and resource expenditures. Users developed workarounds to manage inefficiencies, creating a steep learning curve for new employees. Additionally, users depended on third-party applications for reporting, CRM, and marketing needs. 

Goal

Our objective was to implement a more robust and seamless system, equipping users with comprehensive tools for event creation, management, and sales. Our aim was to reduce operational client support resources by 60 percent. Addressing functionality scattered across disparate platforms and technologies, our strategy also involved sunsetting redundant features, streamlining processes, and enhancing task efficiency.

Discovery

Majority of the users initially resisted change due to their proficiency with the existing complex events and ticketing system. To address this, we identified personas including box office managers, staff, client support representatives, promoters, and ticket agents. We encouraged user participation in workshops such as journey mapping sessions, fostering collaboration to pinpoint and address user needs throughout the design process.

Extensive ethnographic research involved visting venues to observe users in their environments, examining contracts between promoters and artist agents, observing venue pricing by box office managers, and documenting ticket sales by window agents. We leveraged affinity diagramming to organize and analyze all the user research data, allowing us to identify key patterns, pain points, and themes across the user journey. 

We used the framework derived from affinity diagramming to create a linear journey map outline. We conducted a couple in-person journey mapping sessions with promoters, box office managers and their staff to learn about their tasks, pain points and discover opportunties. We were then able to continue to digitize the journey map for wider shareout and alignment. 

We colloborated with our research team to create the end to end journey map. By visualizing the user's interactions, emotions, and challenges, we were able to align stakeholders around a user-centered strategy and to drive more informed design decisions. This journey map also insured that our design solutions were tailored to real user needs.

Design Studio

I led design studio sessions with our product & development partners to foster collective ownership and ideation. We voted on the top problems to solve and then rapidly came up with ideas and sketches. Given the fast pace of this project, we relied on pencil sketches to rapidly iterate on early design concepts before moving to high-fidelity solutions. Sketching enabled us to explore ideas freely, visualize multiple possibilities quickly, and refine layouts based on user needs and feedback. This agile approach ensured flexibility and efficiency in the design process.

Design & Product Planning

I collaborated closely with the product team to break the user journey into meaningful feature sets. We walked through the journey maps and research insights to highlight pain points and opportunities that could shape our product strategy. We prioritize these insights, balancing user needs with business goals to determine which features would have the most impact. Together, we defined the scope of each feature, ensuring it was both user-centered and feasible within our technical constraints. These sessions kept us aligned, ensuring every feature we planned contributed to a seamless and intuitive user experience.

Iterative Wireframing

Our team of designers created wireframes and prototypes to bring our ideas of to life, allowing us to validate concepts before finalizing requirements. We had weekly sessions scheduled with users to get frequent and ongoing feedback. 

High fidelity Designs

Throughout the design process, wireframes & desings were continuously tested using InVision prototypes. Maintaining a strong client relationship, we actively and routinely sought feedback during prototype clickthroughs.