Many movie patrons do not like ordering snacks at the counter out of fear of missing part of the movie due to waiting in line at the concession counter or being late to the movie, or having to wait for a host to take your order at your seat.
Create a snack ordering feature for Theater 1’s movie theater app that allows users to have snacks delivered to their seat or ready for pickup at the front counter.
Project DeckMy initial hypothesis about user issues based on my own experience is impatience from waiting in long line and potentially missing part of the movie. Once research started, I got to hear other pain points from movie goers such as time, bothering others and full pricing transparency.
The research I conducted composed of online survey interviews with eleven individuals and a Competitive Audit of three movie theater companies in the movie industry and what they are doing on their mobile app. Targeting criteria for the surveys included people ages 18-60, go to the movies, and have ordered snacks.
With these interviews, I was able to come up with 3 main pain points that came up most often:
Most users expressed waiting in line as a challenge when ordering snacks as they can miss the start of their movie.
Some users felt like a disturbance to others when they have to tell a waiter their order in the middle of a show.
Pricing transparency can be an issue with ever changing prices and additional charges.
In order to see what movie theaters are currently doing in regards to application features and achieving goals, I performed a competitive analysis and compared the snack ordering features.
Based on the research from the competitive audit, what I found is that not all movie theaters allow online ordering for snacks or allow all snacks to be delivered to your seat. Thanks to the competitive audit, I can see there is a space in the market that Theater 1 will be able to fill with this new feature to their app.
One of the main challenges I experienced during the design process was deciding which order was the most intuitive for someone that was trying to place an order.
Using my previous experience from working with a different mobile ordering app for a point of sale system, I found that one of the most mentioned pain points for customers on that application was having to create/sign into an account in order to do anything on the app.
Although there are positives with requiring an account sign on, especially with tracking customer analytics, I ultimately decided the more intuitive route was to let users explore the menu of a selected location and add items to their cart before starting the checkout process.
“This app is very intuitive and easy to use. I would definitely see myself using this to order snacks at the movies rather than [ordering] at the counter.”
I conducted three moderated usability studies and gathered feedback while users interacted with my prototypes. The results of the usability study was positive however, one of the negative feedbacks I received was to include a cancel order button. This benefits the user by providing access to quickly opt out of their current order.
Below is a list of updates I made from the original prototype:
Throughout this project, I learned about the fundamentals of UX Design, especially in the testing phase. User testing was key in letting me know where my design was successful and where improvement was needed. Fortunately, my design was a success based on user testing.
In future iterations I would like to add: