THE MISSION
As part of my Google UX Design Certification Program, I got a project prompt to design a movie ticketing app in my hometown. I stay in Lagos, Nigeria and the city of Lagos never sleeps as there is always hustle and bustle. A way to relax and ease stress in this busy city is by paying a visit to the cinema or movie house. My mission was to create a personalized and user-friendly movie booking experience for cinema-goers in Lagos, Nigeria.
THE OUTCOME
I created Project Laolu from the ground up, conducting user research and understanding the end-users with proven methods. The aim was providing a seamless user-friendly experience when booking a movie ticket in Lagos, Nigeria. I then built a highly effective movie booking app to help cinema-goers book tickets from different movie houses with ease and flexibility.
THE IMPACT
The project was a success, with a viable app prototype and relevant real-life surveys with the main goal of satisfying the needs of the user. Laolu is a mobile app that ease the process of ticketing for movie lovers in Lagos, Nigeria.
SERVICES
User Experience (UX) Design
UX Research
User Interface (UI) Design
HOW IT STARTED
Project Laolu begins with the tale of Fred Osheku.
Fred Osheku is a communications associate in a reputable non-profit organization. He loves movies and savors the excitement of seeing a blockbuster movie on the big screen at least once a month. However, to fully enjoy his movie experiences, Fred hates being stranded, and dislikes being held down by queues and unnecessary talk. He terms this as “the bottlenecks of human interactions.”
Fred is not alone. Like many other movie lovers, the movie booking experience is below par in Lagos, Nigeria. My goal was to solve this problem with Project Laolu. Laolu means wealth in Yoruba and like the name, my mission was simple – make the movie booking experience richer and seamless.
PHASE 1: Identify the potential users
I launched Project Laolu by applying a user-research method – Setting interview goals, recruiting participants and scheduling interviews. These interviews were done with persons who already go to movies in my hometown. They must also live in Lagos and were familiar with ordering services and products online.
Some of the questions I asked during the interviews include:
- How often do you watch movies at the cinemas? What motivates you to watch a movie there?
- Do you have any struggles getting tickets in a cinema in Lagos? How long does it take you to get one?
- Can we improve the current booking experience with cinemas in Lagos? What do you think can be done to make it easier if any?
At the end of the interviews, two user personas were identified from the group of participants and created for Project Laolu. I selected these user personas to cut across gender, occupation frustrations and motivation.
Now it was time to truly identify the problem Laolu was going to solve.
Phase 2: What is my project solving?
This was done by identifying the problem statements peculiar to each user.
- Fred Osheku] is a [movie lover] who needs [to watch a movie without standing on a queue] because [he wants to enjoy the experience to the fullest].
- [Adekemi] is a [busy executive] who needs [social proof before seeing a movie] because [she wants to enjoy quality time with her family].
With these problem statements and using a proven formula from the Google UX design program, I identified the goal statements for Project Laolu.
- Our movie app will let users book tickets in advance which will affect users who want to order tickets from home by letting users skip the physical queues and save time. We will measure effectiveness by tracking tickets sold through the app.
- Our movie app will let users provide social proof which will affect users who want to spend quality movie time with their friends and family by allowing the user compare movies and time slot in cinemas
With the problem and goal statements now clearly defined. The big question is… How can Laolu satisfy the needs of Fred and Adekemi in the easiest way possible?
Phase 3: Solving the Problem.
To satisfy the problem, I created a user journey map. This map will show how Fred will get from point A – the need to watch a movie to point B – watching the movie. This map contains a task list at each checkpoint, feelings Fred could have and opportunities I could improve at each checkpoint.
Phase 4: Building the movie app
With the destination and journey now in clear, I designed the screens of Laolu. This included the sign-ups, movie ticket, amongst others.
Figma was used for designing the UI of the app. Photos used in the screens are movies as at the time of this project (I optimistically added a movie not yet in the cinemas)
And project Laolu was officially complete!!!
P.S: Project Laolu has not been implemented an app for real-life usage yet. Nonetheless, the prototype was shared with positive feedback from users.
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