True Tickets: Blockchain Event Ticketing.
An event ecosystem to manage, and fulfill event tickets on a blockchain for producers and managers, as well as an app for attendees to buy, sell and transfer tickets.
User Research
True Tickets is the enterprise of three co-founders each of which worked within the blockchain applications division of respectable companies and government agencies. I was brought on the project about one year after their initial conception and research phase.
As a result, the initial wireframes came together with a significant amount of user data already tracked in regard to who they are targeting as their demographic. At the time of my signing on, development groundwork had already begun but with no visual direction. I had three days to come up with a low fidelity map for us to begin following. User testing would have to begin during that time as well in order to feel confident about direction. It was a wild ride, and a terrific test.
Interaction Flow Diagram
Wireframes started immediately, along with any testing I could put together. Remote testing was not an option at this stage given the secrecy of the project itself. While doing low-fidelity wireframes, I along with a team of other UX designers scoped out what actions we knew would have to occur. This gave up a map of features we had to have no matter what. Which lead to a key development deliverable, an interaction flow.
This document served the role of clearing any ambiguity for developers and the initial wireframe phase. This allowed us to spec out each view, all possible actions (that we know of) and the resulting behaviors or required rules. I picked up this trick from another great UX designer, Havana Nguyen, and consider it an awesome tool to help bridge the gap between UX and dev.
Easy Event Search and Selection
At the minimum viable product(MVP) phase we needed to focus on proving the backend systems could actually work! We had a two and a half month period to have an MVP ready to demo at IBM Think. We needed to prove blockchain could work in the sphere of day to day use.
MVP or not, there was plenty to design and develop.
This is a small overview of some of the views designed and developed. It represented the baseline needs for what they wanted to prove out to their investors. We had 2.5 months to build it all and demo that it works as expected.
I was flown out to partake in user testing at IBM Think
This was on the spot user testing! We got good feedback, we gathered real data - it was great! We had to do some early questioning to weed out people who are too tech savvy, or are usability experts. In doing so we ended up testing mostly venture capitalist reps, and other assistants. To be sure, this wasn’t our only testing trial, future tests had specific participants across multiple audience criteria, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up watching people interact with the app in the moment. We had a few success criteria to look for.
1. The user could search for the “IBM Think” mock event and purchase 2 tickets.
2. The user knew which event was the correct IBM event by reading the labels. (We had several IBM events, but only one IBM Think event).
3. The user could successfully activate their ticket for the event without assistance.
It was presented however as simply:
“Please use the application to purchase 2 tickets to the ‘IBM Think’ event” and then “Please activate your newly purchased tickets”.
We gained valuable insight as a result.
The post-task survey SEQ scores:
Criteria 1: 5.8/7 ( 112 trials )
Criteria 3: 4.9/7 ( 94 trials ) - It turned out “activating” was ambiguous in of itself!
Criteria 2 was observational, no SEQ requested.
Testing Area
We setup testing areas with multiple kiosks within the booth, and even ran a few contests as an incentive to borrow some peoples time. While the convention hall itself may not have been the usual quiet location that avoids distraction, in a way that helps a lot too.
This app will see widespread use at events in loud areas with limitless distraction. This seemed relevant and worth not running away from. Plus we still did isolated trials at a later date regardless.
User Interaction Narrowed to Key Actions
For this MVP phase, the goal was to not only give the user the ability to purchase their tickets, but also resell them in our own secondary ticket market.
If they wanted to, they could also transfer their tickets to friends, if the event organizer allowed it. This was a demonstrable use case for smart contracts.
The actual ticket itself could be used by activating it, which would supply a QR code for consumption at the event door.
Clarity for Each Action
The last thing we wanted for this was users to take action without knowing the full consequence. Early on in user testing, we identified that it could be easy to mistakenly send incorrect selections, this being particularly true across certain age gaps. While this wasn’t meant to be a full implementation, we still knew by adding just a bit of extra information we could solve those cases.
While this was an MVP, it was used in the field for live testing for private events, concerts and even a music festival to great success! Today True Tickets maintains the app but is currently focused on building a platform for a different subset of users.
Administrative App
In addition to the mobile app, I assisted in the development of the initial administration web app. This was the interface between the mobile app and the blockchain.
While the initial iteration which we are depicting here was a significant first leap into the sophistication of the app. This functionality has extended significantly.
The main idea here was an interface for event managers to generate the tickets for their event. Beyond that, there isn’t much for more for me to say, but it was a solid beginning to what has evolved and scaled well as needed.
The future of the app intends to target concerts and sporting events.
The next phase is a ways off, but the groundwork is here and the intent is understood.
True Tickets looks forward to the next phase of their app.