MY ROLE
In this project I took a step back from the delivery process and the daily details and instead oversaw the team and handed over the UX deliverables to a new UX Designer.
I kept close connection with the team, participated in brainstorming and internal feedback sessions as well as facilitated the first few client meetings until the team was successfully and comfortably set up to run their own connects. I still participated in all major client connects throughout the project, but took a much less involved role and only jumped in when and where needed to allow my team to grow in confidence and skills.
THE CHALLENGE
CREATE THE HEART OF THE SITE - THE SCHEDULE AND TICKET SALES ENTRY
This project was different in approach than previous work we’ve done for Commonwealth Games. This project needed to be integrated into their Drupal site, and the scope of work was much larger. The challenge was two-fold: How do we best articulate the ticket purchasing phases and the ballot experience that doesn’t allow you to “just buy” your tickets, and how do we design an exploratory experience around all different sports and session available over the Games so that everyone can find something that they want to see?
All of this obviously need to be responsive to cater for any browsing experience and any device.
THE APPROACH
BUILD EXCITEMENT AND INVITE EXPLORATION
We brainstormed the schedule as one of the first and most complex areas to solve. The sheer number of sessions and timings across all sports, venues and cities were quite a complex beast to solve. Furthermore we didn’t just want to show the material, we wanted to allow filtering based on what was most relevant to the visitor; whether that is by sport, by venues or by cities. This obviously added to our already complex task.
We sketched out a solution that we believed would hit the mark - showing the sessions on a timeline and allow deeper exploration once the visitor had narrow his or her option down. At this point we however, for the first time in about 3 years, went back to wireframing a POC for both mobile and desktop - this because we wanted to make sure that we could display all necessary information successfully before we suggested the solution to the client.
DESIGNING FOR EXPLORATION
First we explored the different entry points to the schedule details - we wanted the visitor to be able to break the information up by either day, sport or venue.
Wires exploring the different views and entry point into the detailed schedule.
These wires are not created by me, but rather by the UX Designer on the project.
Final design - very much inline with the original approach.
DESIGNING FOR SCALE
We then explored how the detailed view of a day/sport/venue would look like. We made sure our solution worked for the busiest day of the Games, as well as considered how renderings on mobile would work.
Wires to design exploration - including "worst-case" scenario and filter designs.
These wires are not created by me, but rather by the UX Designer on the project.
DESIGN FOR HYPE
For an event like this, it was also very important to build hype and excitement around the ticketing request phase, so one of our creative executions was to create a big count-down clock at the top of the page - always keeping focus on how close the ticket request phase was.
Research shows that a counter such as this creates a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out).
SIMPLIFY THE COMPLEX
We also worked closely with our Creatives to find a good way to visualise the complexity of the various ticketing phases. We ended up creating the below simple infographic that automatically updates depending on which "phase" the ticket sale is in, and will provide the visitor with clarity on what to expect next. We also produced a set of “explainer videos” to quickly, and easily explain the bigger purchasing process.
THE IMPACT
GET YOUR GAME ON!
Another successful release - the Tickets and Schedule addition to the website went live and we started funnelling people over to Ticketek for the actual e-commerce experience. The highly impactful pages we’d created creatively stands out in comparison to the rest of the GC2018.com pages, and the flexibility we built allowed the client to add standard content pages and FAQs as needed to cover all possible information that one might look for.
