Together we craft better experiences!
Sneak peek behind the scenes of how we designed the event manager app at Bookmyshow
Over the years, BookMyShow has evolved from a purely online ticketing platform for movies to end-to-end management of live entertainment events including music concerts, live performances, sports, and more.
Be it events like U2’s The Joshua Tree Tour & music concerts by international artists such as Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, and Justin Bieber, or venues like Singapore wonderland which gets a footfall of lakhs of fans. Managing events of this scale are challenging and hence we launched the event manager app in 2018 which gave organizers and BookMyShow’s on-ground operation team more control while managing these events.
This app streamlined the operations like
- Scanning and validating e-tickets/m-tickets at entry/exit gates
- Issuing physical tickets and add-ons like merchandise, beverages at the venue
Hundreds of organizers and BookMyShow’s ground operation team members, which are spread across countries like India, UAE, Singapore & Malaysia use this app every day.
“But as the business grows and evolves, the product needs to evolve as well to meet the diverse and growing requirements of the business”
The former event manager app worked well in the Indian context but was becoming difficult to scale and operate while expanding to other markets.
- The first version of the app was built only to be used on android Famoco scanning devices.
- Later we added a PWA version which then could be used anywhere in the world on any mobile device.
- Each of these apps had a very different interface & experience. Hence despite having the same functions users needed to be trained separately to use each of these apps, which added up to extra time and cost.
Why do we need a redesign? 🧐
So we started with understanding user’s pain points with the existing UX in the event manager app. We reached out to our users directly. To dig deeper and for better understanding the context we reached out to our ground operation team to understand the existing issues and problems faced by the team while managing events.
Over the next multiple endless discussions, we tried to immerse ourselves into the context and leverage the learnings ground operation team had in these years
What did we learn? 📝
From those discussions, we learned that even though the app was pretty straightforward to use, the inconsistent interface resulted in users using the wrong functions, leaving them feeling confused and overwhelmed. Here are some feedback from our users and ops team
- Users accidentally performed the wrong action, the app didn't consider existing user mental models resulting in chaos and frustration for end-users (“Promoter was accidentally scanning in exit mode instead of entry mode”)
- Primary flows were not optimized hence users had to perform extra steps & took more time to finish the job. (“Currently it takes 3–4 sec to scan and validate tickets which is extremely high to scan tickets for bigger event approx 200,000+ tickets”)
- The naming convention used were difficult to understand for a laymen user (“Term access control is not understood by everyone change to Ticket Scanning — easier for laymen”)
With all this information and context at our hand, we understood that this redesign will not only enhance the user experience but also reduce the efforts of the operations team in terms of the training period and on-ground assistance.
No wonder why ground operation team had to spent so much energy and resources in training and assisting users every time they need to use the event manager app 😓.
Throughout this understanding & research phase, we tried to question every single element on the interface. This helped us in understanding the reason behind every decision taken by the ops team in making this app.
Keeping it simple and stupid 😘
It was time to cut down the information and make the app intuitive and easy to use. We did this by dividing the event setup flow into 4 simple steps where each screen communicates with the user and guides in setting up the device with the right configuration.
Empathize with user 💙
Imagine yourself standing in a position where a small delay or mistake can affect the speed at which thousands of people are entering the venue to watch their favorite artist perform. It’s a daunting situation right? 🥵. You don’t want users to use the wrong feature or misclick anywhere and end up being lost in the app.
We achieved this by rethinking the entire home screen. We grouped the functions like mode change and edit event function behind the password wall. This made sure that the user who didn't have authority accidentally end up making any changes. The real estate we saved by grouping these elements was then used to instruct users and showing progress.
Using animation for function 🤩
In a place where the user is scanning a ticket every two seconds, the chances of a user getting distracted and losing track is high. We solved this problem by using some animation on the screen as human eyes are more attracted to any moving object on a screen(Big ❤️ to our graphic design team who bought this animation to life). Going one step further we also used haptic feedback on any sort of error.
Usability testing gave us confidence 😎
When you are designing a solution for scale, testing your solution before its development can save you a ton of time and rework in the future. The team was not sure about how users will react to new flows hence we decided to conduct in-person usability testing and interviews to get deeper insights. We were able to test our solution with seven users from different parts of the world.
The test result gave the team confidence about the solution. But off-course it was not all gold and shiny. We observed that five of seven users struggled in editing the event and misunderstood resync and other functions with the edit function.
To solve this problem we tried out multiple versions and finally, after some more testing, we decided on using the design shown below.
Bring everything Together 👏🏻
Finally, after weeks of sleepless nights and god knows how many endless meetings we were ready with our solution. We were super excited to see these new designs in the user's hand. Kudos to the entire team for their patience, sourcing users for usability testing and collaboration. Here is short summary of our decision and its impact,
- 4 simple steps to set up a new event (Minimise Task Perception)
Breaking down the entire setup flow into four simple steps we tried to minimize the perception of how hard the task is. This breakdown also provided extra real estate which we then utilize to display more info for big events which was previously done using dropdowns. - Simple clean home page (Reduce Cognitive Load)
Removing the unnecessary noise & grouping similar features we reduced errors & accidental clicks from users and better use of the primary real estate to guide users. - Entry and exit modes handling
Changing the entry & exit mode from simple tabs to a dedicated drop-down, we reduced errors like accidentally scanning in the wrong mode and gave more control to event managers. - The consistent interface (Maintain Consistency and Adhere to Standards)
Using similar design language and patterns across the android app and PWA we reduce the training period for users & the operations team.
This is what our final solution looked like.
What were the learnings?
I ❤️ this profession because every problem teaches me something new. This project was no different. It taught me many things and most importantly it taught me how small attention to detail enhances the overall experience. Some learning from the project,
The great solutions are not created by one person it's a collaborative effort of the entire team.
Sharing work early and often with the team and stakeholders helps in getting constructive feedback, generate new ideas & create a sense of ownership among all
Design documentation is key. It helps to go back and reflect on your process & mistakes you did along the way.
As they say, design is never done. This release is our first attempt towards changing the way our ground operations team & organizers work by bringing efficiency to the process. We continue to work closely with the ops team to improve it further and will see you soon with another chapter about what happed when we took it to the ground?
✌️ Peace
Shout out to the amazing team who made this possible with their support, feedback & dedication Pervez, Darshan, Aalok, Anil, Vishal, Milind, Praveen, Israr Ahmed …
