🔍All about Research for a Bookings App: A UX Case Study
Welcome to the article where I will be sharing my experience of doing research for a bookings app “Book Events” right from the scratch 📋🖋
Background Score:
As I discussed in the first case study, I am part of a Bootcamp by Growth School and have been busy in some intensive learning lately, thanks to the Trainers and Mentors over there who always want to bring out the best in each one of us 💥
Unlike previously, this time I was a given a product problem statement which is as follows:
The pandemic has put a halt on all live events and movie screenings. Bookevents, an event booking app has seen a complete wipe out of their bookings. As a UX designer, Bookevents has asked you to come up with a UX for pivoting their business in this situation
What we have to do is to go through all the videos which they have made available to us, ask doubts and apply all our learnings to research about the problem statement assigned right from the scratch. Since this time we have been given 3 Editable PDFs, I will share my experience working on all three in a condense manner and will give you the key insights.
⚡️User Research Project Agenda
Core topics which will be covered in my research project are as follows:
🔊 Understanding the Problem Statement!
So in the first PDF we were taught and asked some basics of research and how they would help us in laying a good foundation for our research.
We were asked to write down our thoughts on what exactly a problem statement is and have to list down the given one to us also why is it important to even understand a problem statement?
Asking the 5 W’s — WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE & WHY?
I framed the 5W’s questions in reference to the problem statement and tried to write as many questions as I can related to it. Applying the 5 W’s might not work for every piece of research, but it is a useful idea worth exploring. It does have the potential to help translate research to a wide audience. Some questions which I asked:
- Who are we solving the problem for?
- What could be some other reasons for the dip in booking apart from the pandemic?
- What is the ultimate goal / impact?
- Where do we need to focus most?
- When is the problem occurring?
- How can our app be the “go to platform” for entertainment beating our competition?
- What preventive measures the users would like to see while being a part of screenings/live events?
- How to cover the loss incurred during the pandemic phase?
Next was to go ahead and and answer these questions without diving much into the big rationales and knowing this in my backend that there is no wrong answer as I AM NOT THE USER.
Research Problem Statement:
After getting a brief idea about the 5Ws it was time to define the research problem statement because even if I had all the answers to them were they going to solve the problem of the ultimate users or are they solving just my problems? Hence its time to look for answers outside of you and how is that… RESEARCH! RESEARCH! RESEARCH!
So, I came up with a Research Problem Statement which could be as follows:
The Book-events app is preparing for the ‘new normal’ of events taking place. I want to understand the behavioral shift that the pandemic has brought and its impact on attending live events & movie screenings. I need to plan a research to identify new entertainment patterns emerging for the business.
👉How it will help me?
It will help in thinking and finding new ways of entertainment for us as going by the Research problem statement we must implement those as they are the new market need. We will conduct primary research, secondary research which will eventually help in finding new ideas.
🔊Starting with Research!
My Research was further divided into 2 parts which were:
- Desk or Secondary Research
- User or Primary Research
Secondary/Desk Research (SR) 📋
Desk Research is nothing but going through various sources through industry reports, academic articles, analytics / business data that may already exist with a business etc.
Brace Yourselves a lot of Articles, Factual Insights your way.
👉Article 1
51% of respondents are eager to get out for live events.
80% said they will step out within 15–60 days of Unlock 4.0
As per the survey, East India misses its live events the most, with 52% of respondents from the region eager to catch their favourite concert or show post Unlock 4.0
Users are very much keen to go out in the theatres and the live events provided all the necessary hygiene steps are undertaken.
👉Article 2
40% of Indians would prefer attending a music concert in smaller groups of 50–100.85% of consumers surveyed prefer purchasing their tickets online with the M-ticket & e-ticket option.
People consuming more of home entertainment since pandemic
Paper tickets are what most consumers try to avoid.
👉Article 3
India would have a billion digital users by 2030 as per the insights of the article.
Demand for at-home digital media is expected to grow significantly, as habit-formation and ease of access emerge as drivers.
OTT platforms and digital media have already been attracting new consumers and expanding to new locations and demographics.
👉Article 4
https://qz.com/india/1882315/indias-bookmyshow-banks-on-online-events-to-tide-over-covid-19/
During the lockdown phase, they had well over 750 content in-home offerings in the first three months, with about 100–150 events now being added daily.
Primary/User Research (PR) 📋
Here I have to collect data by interacting with a lot of users.
How will I proceed?
I will conduct 5 user interviews to gather more insights to solve my problem.👨👩👨👩👨
Activity PR 1: Define the Research Target User 🎯
Since I have done my secondary research (Desk research) thoroughly, I was able to define the target user well. Desk research gave me answers about who typically uses the product and some data around it.
However, getting perfect answers is a myth. So I went ahead with assumptions wherever I didn’t have data. ✌
Activity PR 2: Finding my Users 🎯
I prepared a Google form according to my problem statement and sent it to as many people as i can so as to gather maximum and relevant users.
Below is the Pie Chart representation of the close to 40 Responses i received from various users.
Key Insights from the Pie Charts:
- Most of the users are from the age bracket of 25–34 and would like to express their opinions about the situation.
- Due to the Lockdown imposed in India the maximum share of people haven’t gone out since 6 months and I have to ask questions about what changes they would like to see in the coming times for a smoother experience or any particular they have in their mind.
- “Bookmyshow” topped the charts as the most loved and used app while booking an online ticket and most of them rated a 4/5 as the overall user interaction while doing so.
- Promotion via Social Media remained the top contributor in promotion and branding after Television and Radio.
- Keeping Pandemic aside a 51.2% of population still only heads out once or twice a month for movies and events.
- While 41% of the people are still skeptical about going out to theatres and “It all is a depends on the show” once the lockdown is lifted and 34% are very keen on going out.
Activity PR 3: Preparing The Interview Session guide🎯
Some of the questions which I prepared to ask to my users are as follows:
- Firstly thanking the user, telling them the motive and the rationale of the research and about my product. Using verbose like “We are doing this research as when we design or develop, the Idea is to get a fresh eye and perspective that’s really valuable”
- Telling them, “There is no right or wrong answer” and make them at ease. Introducing myself.
- Asking them about their day in life, what they do at their current workplace, hobbies?
- Understanding the interactions and behaviour with respect to (wrt) the product
- What do they do in their leisure time and Asking them their entertainment routine?
- How often do they go out for movies, shows, live events? What is keeping them occupied in the pandemic?
- I asked the users to share their screen while booking a ticket so that i can see at each and every step what their approach and behaviour is.
- What made them chose a particular event?
- Understanding the Likes/ dislikes wrt to the product.
- What challenges do they face while using it?
- Their Previous/Good/Bad experience with the app?
- What made them chose this app more frequently?
- Lastly thanking the user for sparing his valuable time and will be getting back to him with the basic wireframes.
🔊Analyze the Data!
I took all the learnings & started condensing them into artifacts that can be used to make an effective user narrative, driving my design solutions😎
Activity AD 1: Setup for building an Empathy Map and a User Persona 🎯
On the basis of the insights I identified 2 groups of users.
Activity AD 2: Building an Empathy Map for each group🎯
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. I drew it for each group as below:
Activity AD 3: Building a Persona for each Group🎯
Once the empathy map was done, I condensed the user data into personas. User personas are profiles of typical users of your products, services, website. Some of the reasons why I did it:
- It helped me in understanding user’s motivations and needs and how these translate to online use and consumption and, ultimately, purchasing decisions.
- Understanding negative issues such as perceived obstacles or problems in your website or product range or deficits compared to competitors.
🔊Reframing the Problem Statement on the basis of available data (RPS):
Once the research analysis was done, I attempted writing a few HOW MIGHT WE questions based on what I have learnt about the users.
HMW is a design thinking activity in which participants simply rephrase the known challenges along with newer insights from users as a design question.
Activity RPS 1: Noting user challenges & frustrations that i identified in the activities AD2 and AD3 🎯
- First and the foremost is the fear of going out once the lockdown is lifted as there would always be concerns of sanitize and hygiene.
- Most users complained of having a lengthy process while booking a ticket and would prefer a smoother experience.
- Users hate the steps of going back and forward to see all the key information being displayed at different pages.
- Users do not want to miss any hidden terms and conditions so want a proper highlight of everything.
- Users love to see the cashbacks and coupons rather than annoying “ADD-ONS” which are displayed after making a seat selection.
- Would like to see a fast payment gateway response time or a way where the convenience fees is levied less on the ticket or collectively instead on every individual one.
- Some of the users want a “being in the audience feel” or more variety of events being aired live.
- Some of the users wanted detailed information about their theatre or events area about location and infrastructure and would like to see ratings of the hosting place too if possible.
Activity RPS 2: Time to convert these challenges into a HOW MIGHT WE QUESTIONS!🎯
- How might we “Create an experience where users are totally confident about coming to the theatres regarding the pandemic? ”
- How might we “Create a seamless experience for the customers having less steps while booking a ticket? ”
- How might we “Select what information should be highlighted and what non-relevant one can be omitted? ”
- How might we make an experience where users get to see the reviews which they trust and most relevant information displayed on a single page?
- How might we “Make the booking system smooth and refund system less cumbersome for the users”
🔊Wireframe Stage:
Now it was time for solving the problems! I applied all my learnings from the design thinking project — stages ideate & prototype and test to do similar things whatever applicable for this context and arrive at good solutioning.
Below are the wireframes which I made:
“Wireframes with better clarity of texts and images can be accessed here”
Changes Implemented:
- HOME screen shows the outline of the app as well as the Precautions theatres are taking to combat the COVID-19
- Screen 2 and Screen 3 explain in detail what necessary steps they are taking? This can be accessed by Clicking on KNOW MORE of Home Screen
- Screen 4 has implemented IMDB ratings of every movie being screened so that the users don’t have to visit the IMDB website every time separately.
- Screen 5 has Reviews of all the multiplexes as users needed to be assured about it before booking a ticket. Screen 6 tells in detail about the multiplex and its user reviews.
- Screen 7 has Terms and Conditions where the Important ones are highlighted in Red
- Screen 8 has the interior of the theatre where the user can choose his ticket and head out to the next page.
- Screen 9 shows the ADD-ONS before finally heading to the Payments page and now it can be SKIPPED EVERY TIME with an extra button.
🎬My 2 Cents on the Project:
Overall this was an awesome learning experience and right from the start i was convinced that an intensive research would be something of a great journey to be a part of and working on all these 3 Workbooks i wasn’t disappointed at all as it gave me ample opportunity to learn.
Always looking forward to your constructive feedback.
