UX Case Study: Booking Events During the time of Pandemic

A UX Research project to understand the behavioural shift that the pandemic has brought and its impact on attending live events & movie screenings.

10 min readDec 1, 2020

Entertainment is very important in our lives and one of the best ways to get an escape from a stressful routine or celebrate with your close ones and break the monotony of life. We have molded it in our lives in a way that it has become an integral part of our life.

This case study explores creating a seamless user experience for booking events during this time.

Problem Statement

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, Bookmyevents has asked you to come up with a UX for pivoting their business in this situation.

A Product problem statement is assigned to a UX Designer by the company stakeholders.

Disclaimer: BookmyEvents is an online event ticket booking portal based on BookmyShow-India’s Leading Ticket booking platform.This is an educational case study only and bookmyshow has nothing to do with this.

Understanding the Problem Statement

It is important to deconstruct the problem statement and understand its nuances, so all the constraints are kept in mind while ideating solutions for the given problem. It’s also important to identify the source of the problem.

Bookmyevents is preparing for the ‘new normal’ of events taking place. As a UX designer, I first want to understand the behavioral shift that the pandemic has brought and its impact on attending live events & movie screenings. Plan a research to identify new entertainment patterns emerging for the business.

Secondary Research

To understand the landscape of the problem, I spent hours and hours on extensive desk research. The research revolves around a few specific questions to get useful insights and not lose direction.

Understanding the Users Behaviour towards their entertainment mode choice during the Pandemic.
How people’s behavior has changed post pandemic.
Current Consumer trends in cinema
Understanding the competition
Consumer Behaviour towards returning to theatres or events.

Important findings from the secondary research:

85% of all cinema tickets sold online were booked on Bookmyshow, India’s largest entertainment ticketing website🎟, resulting in sales peaking up to 10 million-plus tickets per month. (2018)

▶The same platform suffered close to 0 Revenue because of the lockdown and trying to pivot its business by shifting to online events. (2020)

Urban India is more strongly hit as compared to rural.
With the closure of malls, cinema halls, theaters, parks, etc, the biggest growth was seen in OTT Platforms ( 33%)
Though people may not be able to spend similar time on these platforms post-pandemic, they have got hooked on to the habit of on-demand entertainment.
Social image impacts the user‟s intention towards the use of movie tickets booking apps on smartphones
54% of Indian entertainment lovers are eager to get back to cinemas when the situation feels right.
98% of Indians expect cinemas to implement strict safety and hygiene measures to ensure a safe movie-watching experience.

81% want new ticket offers and 95% need safe food and beverage options
52% said they were unlikely to pay for higher ticket costs if cinemas restrict the number of viewers per show.
40% of Indians would prefer attending a music concert in smaller groups of 50–100.
94% of brands aim at exploring the sector of digital IPs for the purpose of improved consumer attraction and retention in the new normal
In the post-Covid era, only those will succeed who are able to make their audience feel safe.

After analyzing the data from the secondary research and understanding the behavioral insights ( Triggers, barriers, etc..) for every point, noting down the unanswered questions, challenges, I moved ahead with the primary research.

Target User

Through desk research, I identified the target user group for screening. It helps in recruiting participants who genuinely use the product, providing insights that reflect actual user experiences and needs.

Pandemic is something that has affected the lives of every individual. People are facing so many challenges due to it so to connect with the users personally to understand their behavior at this time was the most crucial step. The Interview was conducted with 5 people who I had identified as my target users.

The questionnaire that I prepared to guide me through the Interview:

02. Analyzing the User

This part of the project was really a game-changer for me. It gave me so many insights to move forward with and really understand the users.

After the Interviews, I tried to understand the pain points of my users, the emotion that drove them, their likes and dislikes wrt to the product, and to understand all of these things in a better manner, I prepared Empathy maps and user personas.

To understand my users better, I first divided them into different categories according to various points based on my data to make my analysis easier.

Based on the different group categories following empathy maps and personas were created.

Empathy Mapping

The Group categorization really helped to create empathy maps as I had already brainstormed through data to categorize my users.

First group Users ( The Enthusiasts)

2.Second group ( The Choosy ones)

3.Third group ( The budget beings)

The Empathy Mapping proved to be very insightful and from elaborative data to brief points, it helped me understand the pain points of my users quickly.

User Personas

User Challenges and Frustrations:

Personas and empathy maps helped me identify the user’s pain points.

Top Pain Points of the users:
The main concern of the users is the safety parameters now and would trust only brands for the same.
Users don’t like to miss events or other shows because they couldn’t get the necessary information on time.
The users have to go to multiple platforms to find out all the required information about any show.
The users feel that they get a lot of information about the show but there isn’t enough information about the place.
Food is an important choice that users have to make while booking their tickets and pandemic will effect their choice as only limited places can be trusted now.

Based on the Pain points identified above, I tried to Reframe the Problem Statement which correctly reflects the user's frustrations. To do so I performed the How might we ( HMW) design activity to rephrase the known challenges along with newer insights from users as a design question.

How Might We…

01. How might we ensure safety to users and build trust again to step outside for entertainment?

It’s true that because of the pandemic people have shifted to OTT platforms but the majority of them miss going out and the experience of going out with friends is something that cannot be achieved at home. Ensuring safety to users will help them going out faster and without any worries.

02. How might we provide them with the necessary information based on their preferences?

03. How might we provide them with the required information about the place?

Users feel there is a lot of information about the shows, movies but not about the Multiplex, venue for the event which is a very important factor while making a decision so providing information about the place as well can solve this problem.

04. How might we ensure safety to the nearby restaurant recommendations provided on the app?

The product already provides the option to check nearby restaurant options but considering the pandemic situation, adding the safety ratings or a feature to pre-book their meal might help.

05. How might we help users make a choice quickly?

Users have complained that they have to go back and forth to compare multiple options before booking their tickets so providing an option to compare two places based on the selected filters may help the user.

The Identified pain points are quite different from the problem statement I started to solve where I was trying to understand the new emerging patterns for entertainment during the time of the pandemic. Because when I actually started talking to the users, I understood that most of the users were interested in going out rather than getting more options for in-home entertainment and safety was their main concern. Also, it is the time when the theatres are about to reopen in most of the cities so considering all these points, I decided to solve the identified challenges from the users.

Wireframing

Based on the identified Pain points, I have suggested a few additions to the existing Bookmyshow App considering the time when theatres are about to get reopened.

The main concern of the Users is safety and hence showing them ( through auto-playing an illustrated video)what measures are taken to ensure their safety will help them develop trust again.
To ensure that people who follow the necessary steps for safety are only allowed in the theatres.
Users will be directed to this panel directly after clicking on “Proceed” before wasting much time to look for the shows.

Most of the Users feel they get enough info about the movie but not about the Place. Compared to the existing screen, this layout will thus allow them to see the required details on one screen without wasting much time on getting info from other places.
A new feature of adding reviews about the places has also been added for informed decision making.
Small details like Images of the venue, reviews about the place, capacity are added to install a sense of safety and to provide more information about the place.

Seating layout in the new normal and availability of safe food and beverage options:

The New seating layout that I have proposed is slightly different from the one that is getting popular in the new normal. It will allow at least two people who’re going for the movie together to sit together unlike the other new layouts because the main reason why people are still willing to go out for the movies is to enjoy other people’s company.
Nearby Safe Places to Visit: As many users considered other activities around the theatre while planning their outing, this feature will help them explore their options and pre-book their choice of cafe, restaurant, or even plan a takeaway.

Ps- The research was done at the start of October and hence the solutions are focus on the situation at that time before the multiple booking apps adapted the “safety first” feature.

Feedbacks

After completing the wireframes, the complete documentation was sent out to my peers and mentors from the field for their feedbacks.

Peer 1: What really worked is the video which showcases the safety protocol taken by the theatre. It gives users reliability that they can visit this theatre without worrying about the pandemic and enjoy the movie.
Peer 2: I really liked the solutioning of how there should be a feature giving details about the place we are going to for an event or a movie to watch. This will really help users to be decisive in their actions but maybe you could put them in a more detailed manner.
Peer 3: I like how you’ve addressed that the safety and sanitization policies of the place or just information about the place are not clearly displayed, and you’ve worked towards that. You could have explored a bit more into the “In-home entertainment” section in your app. What are the kind of events they offer there?
Peer 4: I really like how you have categorized the users into 3 distinct groups with detailed insight on each of the groups.
Kept in mind, the safety concerns of the users and thereby providing the perfect solution to that — by giving them information
“some of the users need to acquire detailed information of the event” — In this maybe we could have directed the users to view other events, on the “book now” screen itself.
Peer 5: Really good insights from the users and it really complements the research statement.Really like the idea of safety guidelines but it may get ignored by the user is there a way we can gamify it to make it more attractive and avoid it being ignored.

The feedbacks were really insightful and I was able to do multiple iterations after that.

What’s Next

Due to the time constraint, there were only certain things I could do, But the research has a lot of scopes and I would further like to execute some more solutions that I have proposed and also the research was sent to many people for feedback. The UI is an essential part of the presentation which I would be working on next but until then read this story which has really inspired me to learn UX beyond just pretty screens.