The Makeover of iGV App - A Case Study

A personalised experience for movie goers

CHALLENGE BRIEF

Identify problems and/or opportunities with iGV, Golden Village's cinema app to improve the design of a personalised cinema going experience for movie goers and GV movie club members.

METHODOLOGY APPROACH

Discovery

Heuristics Evaluation

Competitive Analysis

User Research (Affinity Mapping)

Cognitive Walkthrough 

Define

Persona

Customer Journey Map

Feature Prioritization 

Develop

Wireframing

Prototyping

Usability Testing

DISCOVERY

Golden Village is the largest cinema chain in Singapore with 13 Multiplexes Cinemas & 106 Screens. The first local cinema company to personalise the movie-going experience through its Movie Club program and mobile app (iGV), which is a feature-rich mobile app with over 23 features.

Heuristic Evaluation

First, we decided to assessed the current iGV app to better understand it before reaching out to the actual users. Using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 general principles for interaction design, here are the highlight some of the major findings:

For the full analysis, click here.

Competitive Analysis

We analysed what other competitors had to offer as well as, how they design the cinema booking experience differently.

User Research

A screener survey was developed to understand the current demographic (age group, employment status), frequency, membership, behaviours in booking such apps, devices used and preferences. 

These helped inform us who are the relevant users to target and what are the current behavious and pain points experienced.

Based on our user findings, we find that 41% of participants with experience using iGV are no longer using it. Their reasons resonate with what we had found earlier in the heuristic evaluation and competitive analysis.

From here, we decided, based on the higher probability for conversion to use the app, that our primary persona would be those that are GV members and no longer using or have not used the iGV app. They are more susceptible to use the app as GV members to get the most benefit out of the membership.

We reached out to those who fit our base target users (iGV members) for further interview questions and do a cognitive walkthrough to understand their thought process and behaviours while using the app.

We synthesize our findings using affinity mapping to know what are the current pain points, challenges and motivations. 

DEFINE

Persona

From our research, we began to see two big clusters that defined the participants, who are the Casual Goer and the Movie Enthusiast types. Two distinct types, one that goes on social occasions to watch movies in a group and the other who always watches movies upon released. These formed our primary (casual) and secondary (enthu) personas.

Customer Journey Map

Based on the personas, we identified their respective customer journey map to identify the different touchpoints and opportunities these experiences can be improved on. For the casual goer, sharing of movie details and ticket buying process, and for the movie enthusiast, movie-related notifications and faster payment.

User Goals vs Business Goals

From here, we looked at both the user goals and business goals to identify which are the most optimal opportunities based on the synergy from both parties.

User Goals

• Straightforward access to movie information and showtimes.
• Efficient ticket booking process.
• Get information about the promotion and direct step to use it.
• Get novelty goods/merchandise.
• Get updates of upcoming movies.
  

Business Goals

• Increase sales from ticket-selling and F&B.
• Provide personalised movie-going experience for movie club members.
• Convert users to members.
• Convert website ticket buyer to use the iGV app.

Design Goals

We scoped the design goals of this project as well as determined their success metrics:

• Users are able to complete the booking process in a simpler, faster and more efficient way
• Users are able to apply the member promotions through the mobile app and complete the task at hand
• Users feel satisfied using features that cater to their immediate need based on their positive feedback

Feature Prioritisation

Bearing in mind that iGV is feature-rich, we decided to prioritise features that will impact our primary users first. We discussed on what requires a complete overhaul as a major improvement or those that only require a change in visual design or simple layout as minor improvement. This provided us clarity on which to focues on first and start testing early.

DEVELOP

Wireframe

With the proposed changes, the team came together to synergise  for consistency and sketch the key wireframing components .

A mid-fidelity wireframe was created first to test our concepts for clarity without all the colours, images and content. We discussed on items such as main top bar, bottom bar, sidebar, page scrolling, cards, symbols, buttons and how the pages interact with each other.

Prototype and Usability Testing

One of the key insights, from our first usability testing, was to change the default first page from quick buy page to the movies page, as participants were not sure what to do as they were used to see movie posters to scroll and browse first before booking.

"I rely on visual poster to verify that it is the right movie that I'm booking. I'm not confident that I'll book the correct movie just from the title itself" 

Key changes made

Based on the usability results, we managed to improve the following and reached our design goals.

• Participants were able to complete the booking experience 47% faster on average.
• 4 out 5 participants were able to complete all the tasks (booking, promotion, finding coming soon movies to bookmark). This is an increase of 2 participants more from the current app testing.
• The System Usability Scale (SUS) improved from 45.5 to 79.6.

"I find the functions of this app similar as the original iGV app, the (high-fidelity) prototype is cleaner with better look and feel."

"..went thru the booking flow with the applied promotion, it's like everyday booking, i think its faster than trying to use the website"

"it's very straightforward, to see trailers, cast and reviews"

iGV Mobile App

Interactive Prototype

Insights

• Consider to use a different format to represent the changes in completion rate for the usability testing
• Be mindful of the sample size between the usability testings. Perhaps, have an equal sharing for better representation and comparison.

Reflections

• Have a better understanding of which tools to use that best fit the project requirements
• Synergy with my teammates is important. Be open-minded and talked everything out including our reasoning for making certain decisions.

Disclaimer: This is a project work done as part of the General Assembly's User Experience Design Immersive 10-week Programme.