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Cinemate

Designing a new seat reservation app for movie theatres, making it appealing for the users and easy to use

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Project overview

Cinemate is a new seat reservation app for movie theatres. This app allows users to quickly find a movie to watch and allow them to buy tickets without too long of a process. Even if the user is not sure what to watch, the app can give recommendations based on a quick quiz :D

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I worked on this project by myself from September 2022 to December 2022 while taking the Google course for UX design. I was responsible for conducting interviews and surveys, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility and iterating on designs.

The problem

Adolescents and adults complain that most of the apps for seat reservations are not appealing and sometimes are confusing.

Goals

Design a seat reservation app that:

  • is intuitive

  • helps the user

  • looks more appealing than existing apps

I conducted two usability studies. The findings from the first study helped guide the design from wireframes to mockups. The second study was based on the high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed some refining.

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In the first usability study I learnt that users want more payment methods, that they had some trouble finding the movie guide and that they need a more obvious path towards settings like changing the saved payment method.

Research

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Main challenge

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Limited research: although I conducted interviews and surveys to understand users' needs, there may be a larger audience of movie-goers who have different preferences or pain points that I didn't get to explore.

Don't know what to watch?

Since some users expressed their wish to have some help when choosing a movie, I decided to create an option for a quick quiz, which would then give some recommendations from the available movies, based on the user’s answers. Research has revealed that some users had a hard time finding the movie guide since it was only available on the “Movie section”. Now the quiz can be accessed from the home page as well.

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Simplified version of the home page

Some users don’t want to see advertising of the movies or the food, so I decided to create a simplified version of the home page, with the most important buttons up front. This simplified page would benefit not only users who are not comfortable with a lot of technology, but also users who just prefer a more minimalistic look.

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Better organisation

After the first usability study I also learnt that users need a more obvious path towards settings like changing the saved payment method, so I redesigned some of the pages to be more minimalistic.

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Dark theme

As some users expressed in the second usability study, a dark theme seemed more appropriated and would give more of a cinema vibe. And so, I decided to change the app’s theme. The yellow was kept as it symbolizes cheerfulness, which is exactly what I want my app to transmit to the users, since going to the cinema should bring a little happiness to their day.

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Results

The app made users feel like the app was fun and really tried to meet their needs.

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Quote from user feedback:

“I never thought that I’d actually use a seat reservation app, but it makes it so easy and it’s also quite appealing”

What I learned

While designing the Cinemate app I learned that the first ideas are just the beginning and that everything can take a 180º turn any second. Usability studies really helped me a lot understand more the process and refine the mockups, even if I didn’t have the chance to conduct the research the real way :)

Next steps

  • Conduct another usability study to verify if the user's pain points have been addressed effectively 

  • If possible, conduct more research to determine new areas of need

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