Tyler Phang
Niger Ang
Shuchita Gupta
Daniel Aw
UX Researcher
Business Analyst
Lead Designer ( App )
Pen and Paper
Trello
Mural
Optimal Workshop
Figma
2 weeks group unsolicited
This project aimed to identify usability issues and opportunities with the existing Golden Village app [2.2 stars on iOS] and design a solution that can better retain declining number of moviegoers.
We redesigned the Golden Village app by streamlining the core user experience of its ticket booking process. We also introduced a sleek and consistent UI across all screens to align with its reputation as a leader of innovation and moviegoing experience.
Golden Village (GV) is Singapore's leading cinema chain, with 14 theatres housing 113 screens. It is a joint venture between the Golden Harvest of Hong Kong and Australia’s Village Roadshow.
How does the cinema make money?
What are the business constraints?
What are the business goals?
Before Covid-19, SVoD (subscription video on demand), such as Netflix and HBO, became very popular and rocked the cinema industry. The pandemic accelerated its impacts, forcing cinemas to close worldwide.
Golden Village finally reopened its doors after 4 months. But it faced a new problem.
The government implemented a staggered seating arrangement to abide by social distancing measures. That essentially cuts its potential revenue and operating capacity by half.
Online ticket booking became the go-to now. With Netflix subscriptions on the rise, improving its digital user experience is more crucial than ever before. With businesses pushed to innovate and digitalise, so did Golden Village.
The company needs to retain the declining number of moviegoers in these trying times.
We first look into reviews on the App Store and Google Play Store to get some early insights into what users might think of the current app experience.
(Hint: it's bad)
Sadly, there were no updates to the iOS app for more than a year. As for Android, the last update was 2 years ago.
We tried out both platforms and rounded up usability issues, and assigned a severity rating to each case, using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics as our guide.
Together we identified many issues, but we will prioritise findings with the highest severity of 4 for fixes.
We conducted features and task analysis across our direct competitors to understand the competitive landscape. Our objective is to identify and understand how they approached the features.
There were many standard features. But most notably, for Golden Village, the prices were not indicated while selecting seats.
Next, we did a trial run by booking a movie ticket. We were interested to see what the process would entail and how we could improve the process.
The booking processes were similar except for minor differences in the search order, whether cinema or movie. However, for Golden Village, its process was a little longer. We will aim to streamline that.
We interviewed 8 users to deepen our understanding of their goals, expectations and frustrations when deciding to catch a movie and book the tickets. It also helped us to validate our heuristic findings.
Our user research indicated that most users preferred to book online for convenience. Most users already have a movie in mind, and their goal was to look for a simple and straightforward booking process.
We mapped out Jamie’s experiences for a better context into his needs, touchpoints, and emotional journey. From here, we identified the chokepoints and areas of improvement to tackle next.
The product discovery and booking process were the key pain points.
It was imperative to focus on and fix them.
We believe that doing so would stand a good chance of retaining customers for future movies. It also helps to reduce competition with other cinema chains and aggregator apps.
We derived over 20+ feature ideas from findings informed by our competitive analysis, heuristics evaluation and customer journey maps. Then, we weighed them carefully and identified the strongest and necessary features to implement based on the MoSCoW method.
Before diving into the design, we drew out a user flow to understand the steps and actions when booking a movie ticket. It also served as our early blueprint by identifying the critical tasks and decision points to design first.
With the user flow at hand, I proceeded to hand sketch and rapidly translate our ideas into tangible solutions for mobile app and web platforms.
I assisted in building our design system together, with Tyler taking the lead.
Our guiding principles are:
We want to convey Golden Village as a cinema brand whose users will feel right at home. The brand essence should also communicate a sense of grandeur and state-of-art technology. Lastly, we want to position them as Singapore’s leading cinema exhibitor with a confident and innovative spirit in this trying time.
We retained the original yellow gold colour that people fondly remember Golden Village. We went with a dark theme because, in the physical world, people associate moviegoing experience with a dark environment.
As for the typeface, we kept the Helvetica used currently. Legibility is critical when viewing information in the dark. What’s more, the sans-serif offers excellent readability with a refined and modern look. Hence there was no justification for changing it.
Golden Village needs to stay at the top of its game in the age of video streaming and an ongoing pandemic. Currently, the existing graphics look dated and, in some cases, pixelated. We introduced sleek and polished components that align with its brand image and identity. We also ensured the movie cards look consistent between both platforms, with a balance of aesthetics and usability. The result is an intuitive and refined UI that supports Golden Village reputation as a leader of innovation and moviegoing experience.
With the business goals and user research in consideration, we proceeded to work on our prototypes’ visual design. We took note of each plus and deltas from usability tests and incorporated them into design iterations. Below are 5 of our key concerns and solutions.
We included movie titles and essential info in the app. Also, we enlarged the movie card size, which allows for better readability. According to user interview feedback, the runtime and ratings are information users want to know instead of popcorn reviews. So we decided to make the changes accordingly.
We introduced visual indicators to minimise user confusion. There were none in the existing app. Users have to click on the time slots and check them one by one. Thus, we added colours to identify them better. We also relocated the legend for seat availability to the top instead of the bottom. That improved the visibility and discoverability of the current status. We also added borders to indicate that time slots are clickable.
Previously, add-ons were on a separate page. We combined them with ticket price selection over at iteration 1 to streamline. Subsequent test findings revealed that add-on card sizes were too big. It took the attention away from the more critical ticket prices. There were also concerns about scrolling horizontally through the long list. So we reduced the size of cards for less distraction. Finally, we switched to vertical scrolling to view more options below.
We added an information icon for terms that might confuse the users. Then, we rephrased unclear terms to words that they are familiar with. For example, most users do not understand the meaning of convenience fee. We included an information overlay to explain what it is. We also rephrased the Pay Now button, which many users mistook for various banks’ PayNow feature.
Upon a successful booking, the movie entry’s QR code is sent to the user's email inbox. The user has to switch between apps to access it. What if he or she forgot the password and struggled to find the QR to enter the theatre? To solve this, we created a ticket page, which includes a QR code and a summary of ticket details. The ticket page can be easily found in-app inside the hamburger menu.
We approached 5 unique participants and conducted 3 rounds of usability tests. We then documented the findings of each task and tracked the system usability scale (SUS) score as our primary metrics for success.
All participants completed the tasks successfully.
The first usability test saw a dip in SUS score, primarily caused by insufficient visual cues.
However, our next iteration saw good improvements.
Average SUS score went up from 75 to 83. Excellent!
Book your movie tickets on the go with confidence!
Anytime. Anywhere.
Sit back and relax!
Immerse yourself in the all-new Golden Village on the big screen.
We would like to explore the idea of scanning credit card information via a camera. It would allow the user to quickly capture the details instead of keying them one by one. Given more time, we would also like to touch on the “could have” features, such as looking into ways of rewarding loyalty for repeat customers. We hope to generate brand loyalty among users who have no preference for cinema choices.
On a side note, based on our independent research on demographics, we observed an untapped market audience in Singapore - elderly moviegoers. We believed this target group can increase some cinema attendance during weekday off-peak hours. How might we make the ticket booking process less intimidating to them? Perhaps we could explore UX accessibility for the elderly, such as text language settings, increased text size, high error tolerance, introducing better rewards for them, etc.
Coming from the animation and CG film industry, having an opportunity to design solutions for a struggling cinema was very meaningful and close to my heart. We understood that a revamp of a website and mobile app will not bring about any sudden revenues in a matter of weeks. There was still much to be done and innovate for Golden Village in these trying times. Nevertheless, we hoped that our mockup solutions can provide a possibility to reduce the churn rate and retain declining moviegoers, as mentioned in our business analysis.
Working in a team has been a rewarding experience for me. We learnt from each other’s strengths and helped to cover each other’s weaknesses.
Lastly, I want to give a big shout out to my teammates, Tyler, Niger and Shuchita, for the great teamwork and hard work for this 2-week project. It was not easy, but we made it. Cheers!
Designed & Developed by Daniel Aw