Movie Town Theaters Snack Bar App
The Product
Movie Town Theaters is a large national chain of movie theaters. Their goal is to provide the ultimate theater going experience offering in house dining, family oriented play areas, and a large snack bar. The snack bar ordering feature for the Movie Town Theater app will allow Movie Town Theaters customers to quickly and easily purchase beverages and snacks. This feature will be combined with the movie ticket purchase feature to provide an all-in-one ordering experience.
The Problem
Movie goers want to be able to order beverages and snacks from the snack bar without having to stand in long lineups.
The Goal
Create an app that will allow customers to purchase beverages and snacks in addition to movie tickets.
My Role
Lead UX Research & Designer
My Responsibilities
My responsibilities throughout the project included user research (interviews and usability studies), paper and digital wireframing, low and high fidelity prototyping, verifying accessibility, and design iterations.
User Research
As the lead UX researcher and designer for this project, I conducted interviews, created empathy maps, and conducted usability studies to understand the user and their needs for this app.
After conducting the initial interviews two primary goals emerged for these users. The first and most common goal was to avoid lineups so they can focus on other things like socializing with friends and family, or playing in the theater arcade. The second goal of these users was to save time, or in some cases “buying” them more time especially for extenuating circumstances such as being stuck in traffic.
User Pain Points
Persona
Journey Map
Paper Wireframes
Creating multiple versions of the wireframes helped to identify features for the app while addressing user pain points, and mapping out the basic user flow for the page. The snack bar page of the app resembles the existing movie selection page of the app ensuring a smooth and seemless user experience.
Note: This is a digital representation of the paper wireframes for improved clarity and readability.
Digital Wireframes
During the design phases of the project, user recommendations were implemented into the overall design of the app focusing on easy navigation and providing an informative layout.
In addition, the app’s menu also focuses on navigation allowing users to easily navigate to any section or feature of the app. The menu also provides quick and easy access to customization options, and accessing help at any time.
Low-Fidelity Protoype
The low-fidelity prototype connected the two primary functions of the app: 1) ordering a movie 2) ordering beverages and snacks This allowed users to test the prototype and provide feedback for later designs.
Usability Study
I conducted two usability studies. The first study was based on a low-fidelity prototype. This study revealed the user pain points with using the app. The second study was based on a high-fidelity prototype that revealed some missing features and a few minor issues that needed improvement.
Mockups
The initial designs for the snack bar app included many features but user feedback from the usability studies identified some missing features. After reviewing the user recommendations I added a My Orders button to view current and past orders. I also added an About button to link to the overview of the company. In addition, I noticed that the home and movies links connected to the same page so I removed the movies link to eliminate this redundancy.
Another important conclusion from the usability studies was the need for more information for the user, especially the shopping cart icon. I added the number of items currently in the shopping cart to the cart icon. I also simplified the user experience by adding close buttons to key pages to allow the user to close the current screen and return to the main feature page without having to backtrack through previous screens.
Screenshots:
High-Fidelity Prototype
The final high fidelity prototype integrates many of the recommendations from the research conducted for the project to provide an intuitive interface while maintaining a clean and smooth user flow.
Impact
The Movie Town Theaters movie and snack bar app demonstrates the company’s goal of providing its customers with the ultimate movie going experience. Having an app that gives its customers the ability to order movies and snacks will greatly improve customer satisfaction and will give Movie Town Theaters an edge over the competition.
What I Learned
While working on this project I have learned the value of conducting research and getting the crucial user feedback that will turn a good product into a great product that everyone will want to use. I also learned that design is only one aspect of the project and to always remember accessibility when designing a product.
Next Steps
Finalize designs
Hand off designs to the engineers for final product development
Run a final usability study with the actual product
Based on the study’s success prepare product for beta testing
Test final product with participants (demo product in select theaters)
Product release
Post release review