I was part of a team that was tasked with redesigning a functional product that hadn't been updated in 16 years. The project had a tight deadline of 3 months, and the goal was to create usable software that would bring in revenue for the company, either through its own brand or through white labeling to other companies.
To gather insights and inform our design decisions, I worked with a team of researchers to interview real users on a weekly basis. I also needed to balance the desire to create a fresh and new design with the need to maintain some degree of familiarity for users who had been using the product for 16 years.
To test my designs, I created low-fidelity mockups and prototypes using tools like Zeplin and Sketch and then tested those designs with real, active users. Through this project, I learned how to solve complex problems as part of a team of designers.
Defining the problems with the old Inventory software
The old software lacked accessibility. Our users said they would get eye strain from looking at the small text and bright white background in the dark while at the ticketing booth.
There also wasn't a great way of quickly searching venues and events or handling triage.
Another problem with the old software was there wasn't a way to search by Ticket Type, Comps, VIP, Handicap Accessible, Different Tiers, etc.
Fixing the seat map experience
With the fresh update to the seat map experience, our ticket tellers can now easily search through different seats from "sold" and "comp," etc.
We also added a layers button with a pop-out for a much better experience.
We ran user testing with our real active users on these views and features, and they found them to be significantly better and easier to get the job done than our previous 16-year-old software.
The user goal for inventory was to make the ticket sellers' jobs much easier.
The old software was clunky and lagged. It wasn't designed to handle the day-to-day tasks that the tellers faced every day in 2021.
We ran user tests on a few different colorways for the refresh. Ultimately we landed on this dark blue colorway for accessibility and ease on the eyes while in dimly lit rooms.
For our pricing team, we added tools that would recommend pricing changes for tickets to make their job easier. This was a highly asked-for feature from that side of the company.
Shifting the focus to a search-based product
Before the redesign, the product hadn't been focused on search functionality, and our stakeholders wanted to change this.
From dozens of user interviews that I helped conduct and facilitate, we quickly realized how important this feature would be.
Our Ticket Tellers, as well as pricing and triage teams, had a very difficult time doing their job without being able to search for names, events, and prices quickly.
We went through many iterations of this and created lo-fi mockups and prototypes using Sketch and Zeplin and tested them on the same users that we initially interviewed in the research phase.
We found a great solution, and our users found that what we came to for this solution heavily impacted their workflow and made it much easier to get the job done in a fraction of the time.
Creating a reusable component library and design system
To keep a cohesive and consistent design across the different platforms and white-labeled products, I built reusable components and added them to the AXS design system for the B2B side of the product.
We first built a few screens and used Dan Malls' approach to pick out the components that we would frequently use to start our design system.
These are just a few of the components from the design system, as I don't have access to the full system.
Box Office
We kept a cohesive and consistent design across the different platforms and white-labeled products. That carried over into BOX OFFICE / Sales/ Resolution.
