The ticket purchasing experience is tedious and anxiety inducing. Fans are left waiting cluelessly in a queue when purchasing tickets for high in-demand events. This queue can take hours, and when their turn finally comes, they run the risk of all tickets being sold out. My team and I recognized that…
There is an opportunity to utilize artificial intelligence as a means to provide concert goers with a reward-centered app that allows them to have a smoother and more personalized experience to gain access to highly in-demand events.
As a group, we researched both artificial intelligence and communities of live event attendees who expressed frustration in acquiring tickets for highly in-demand events. A groupmate and I researched artificial intelligence, while the other two researched live event attendees.
From my research, I learned that when implementing AI, you must be aware of the consumer experience that comes along with it. There are emotional, cognitive, behavioral, sensorial, and social elements to this interaction.
AI itself is comprised of three elements: data collection & storage, statistical & computational techniques, and output systems. Data capture can sometimes make users feel like they are being exploited. Sometimes, AI can also systematically exclude consumers.
There are also different social experiences with AI. Two of these experiences are when consumers know they are interacting with AI, and when they don’t know from the very beginning that the person they are interacting with is not human.
The group that worked on researching communities that attend live events discovered that scalpers and bots were a major problem. Tickets would be taken in large quantities and resold at highly expensive costs, leaving real fans unable to purchase tickets. There was frustration with the ticket purchasing process overall; sites like Ticketmaster would be flooded with traffic, causing users to be unable to access the site. Users would also be put in “waiting rooms”, which serves as a sort of queue, leading to anxiety as well.
Research further showed that users want:
Each person in our group conducted an interview with a live event attendee. I interviewed someone who has attended two concerts:
Name: Zubaida Kadir
Age: 21
Events: Stray Kids District 9 Tour & Global Citizen Fest 2023
We are targeting concert attendees, specifically those who are "die-hard fans" or "superfans" of their favorite musicians. These fans are those most likely to attend concerts compared to casual fans. A great deal of these fans may also go to long lengths to acquire tickets.
I created our user persona. After creating a first draft of it, I learned that I was trying to make her seem way too real. I had added several irrelevant details about her life that had nothing to do with our concept of live events. I fine-tuned it so that the details about her were relevant, while still maintaining that she is a "real" person.
Name: Ashley Carrera
Interests: Loves attending concerts and raves.
Desires: To be able to afford the most priciest concert tickets, multiple times a year.
Goals: Attend 20 concerts in one year.
Age: 22 years old.
Status: Full-time student, has a part-time paid internship & a work-study job.
About Me: Ashley is a 22 year old woman who attends Texas State University. Since she was a junior in high school, she's loved attending concerts. Her first concert was for Bruno Mars and she has expanded her music taste from solely pop to rap and hip-hop, too. When she began to dorm for university, Ashley and her roommates would look for cheap concerts nearby and attend them. After she turned 21, she began to attend raves as well. These events are huge stress relievers for her and she feels like she can fully express herself there.
How can she attend these events if she is always waitlisted, despite always supporting her favorite artists?
"As a dedicated fan, I want to be able to purchase seats before the
general public sale, so that I don't have to go through a stressful
ticketing process to see my favorite artists."
To create a seamless and stress-free ticket purchasing experience, we decided that we should create an app centered around pre-sales. A pre-sale is an event that takes place before tickets go on sale to the general public. Fans (or attendees) register for the pre-sale so that they can purchase their tickets before the general public. However, pre-sales can run into the same issue as the general ticket purchasing process.
Our app requires fans to accumulate boosts, for a total of 5*, in order to receive a pre-sale code. To attain boosts, users must fulfill different tasks. Pre-sale codes are given on a first come, first serve basis. If a user has accumulated 5 boosts but did not receive a code, their effort will not be in vain, as it’ll roll over to the next event that artist holds (or is part of). Full disclaimer: this app will NOT be selling tickets, it only provides pre-sale codes.
I ideated using AI as part of the tasks aspect. Some of the tasks we’ve included are watching videos and taking quizzes. AI will generate the questions asked. As a preventative measure against bots (and users being dishonest), AI will generate questions based on the video’s content, and ask them at random points in the video. It will also be used to track a user’s merchandise purchases for that artist/group to grant them an extra boost.
*Originally, it was to be a total of 10
I was part of the subunit that worked on the user flow, while my other two groupmates worked on the journey map. As we worked on the user flow, I felt like we were putting in too many details that deviated from our main flow. We were describing what each screen would look like, and describing each feature. My subunit then reworked it to be simpler. During this process I also learned about what shapes to use when representing each step of the flow.
We then split up which screens we should create as our very basic wireframes. I created the third screen (progress bar and tasks). The flow goes like this: Registering for an Event → Home Screen → Tasks to Complete → Fulfilling One of the Tasks (Watching Videos) → Goal Reached
We each conducted our own user tests. As our test, we had users go through the main flow & fulfill the following tasks:
I tested a young man named Brandan, who did not really have a hard time completing each task. During the task, Brandan...
The other interviews yielded little confusion as well. Some did not click the Rewards page, and one wanted “progress to be check marked after completing tasks”. In order to eliminate all confusion and counter what occurred during our test, we updated it so that users should be able to see their ongoing progress frequently updated. We also added a blurb of text at the start that makes the purpose of the app clear to the user.
For my personal updates, I changed the fonts we used. I felt like our display font was not “fun” enough, so I changed it. The fonts we paired were also a bit too similar, and we needed some more contrast. We also did not include a log-in or sign up screen. The “registering for an event” screen may not be the clearest, so I altered it, too. That screen too closely resembles a log-in screen, even though that’s not what it is. Plus, when you’re already logged into an account, some of the information it’s asking for is unnecessary.
If I were to further develop this app in the future, I would include an accounts page and a settings page (as well as the log-in and sign up). I would like to create a setting in which those with disabilities can toggle subtitles or a color-blind friendly color scheme. Creating more games and quizzes would also be an important development, as these are just some examples.
I have updated and included some screens to demonstrate my proposal.
