User-Centered Design

Project 1: movie exhibitor portal (*ongoing project)

The Why: Currently the main communication channels between NCM and our movie exhibitors have been email, phone, and a site designed for file-sharing. To serve our clients faster and more efficiently, it was agreed to by business leaders that we need to establish an online presence whereby we could host a one-stop solution that would provide: document/file sharing, live-chat service, E-ticketing (issue reporting), social media opportunities, theater analytics and on-demand financial data.

The UX Task: My team has been tasked with designing a ground-up solution (CMS) built responsively so that clients can access the above features within the theater, or in the field via mobile devices. This is an ongoing project that was kicked off in June and the below information is what we’ve accomplished so far. To date, my responsibilities have included: Gathering user-requirements from the business, wire-framing/prototyping for both mobile and desktop, sharing concepts with users and gathering their feedback , and writing user stories for Dev to consume.

Project Progress: Via brain-storming sessions, it was determined that the solution would exist as an exhibitor portal that would consist of several apps, along with more efficient communication methods, and 24/7 access to several features that would decrease customer frustration and increase response rates, as well as easier accessibility to needed assets.

Story Creation

Normally a BA function, I’ve found that if I write all user-stories we decrease confusion as to what is needed from the UX team as far as functionality/specs in regards to how the Dev team consumes the information. Below is an example of my process and since taking on this extra step, as a development team we’ve increased first-time pass rates as well as burn-up and experience far less confusion as to what is required.

mobile approach

Per our research, we learned that having the ability to access portal functions via a mobile device was highly desired by every user interviewed, so we’ve started our design approach from the mobile angle first. The below screens represent my first draft; when I’ve completed the design to include all of the first-iteration items, I’ll then user-test to ensure we have the correct approach.

desktop approach

As stated above, we’ve spent a majority of our time on mobile research/development but below is a matching concept that will exist as our desktop version.

Project 2: Premium Advertising Placement

The Why: As America’s largest cinema advertising network, there’s the opportunity to reach more than 750 million movie-goers a year. As such, there’s consistent competition for advertisers to garner as much attention to their products as possible. To serve our clients more efficiently as well as increase revenue, we recognized a need to offer what would eventually be called “Premium Placement” to those clients that requested closer placement to the feature film as well as greater space between themselves and competitors.

The UX Task: My team was tasked with re-designing a portion of our scheduling product to accomplish this task. My role consisted of gathering user-requirements, authoring user stories, creating/amending personas, producing several iterations of wire-framing concepts followed by detailed prototyping, and finally multiple usability sessions before presenting the final design to stakeholders for approval. In addition, I managed the time-budget for my team on all our deliverables and ensured the tasks I assigned my team were fair and achievable.

A Successful Result: Utilizing a proven, user-centered design approach, we achieved our goal of delivering a solution that satisfied both our advertising partners as well as our sales team, all within the allotted 6-month time frame! Below are the details of the project.

Who we were designing for

I've created several styles of personas throughout the years, and the examples below are aligned to my company’s passion for movies. I’ve created more of these at NCM than is the average, as I uniquely serve both internal and external customers.

Specifically for this project, we were designing a platform that served and connected two separate divisions. As such, it was paramount that I kept both needs in mind as we designed, so the below personas were very helpful in that endeavor.

Understanding the journey

Conducting Journey Mapping sessions is essential to ensuring that we get an accurate picture of their job duties as well as how each activity intersects with one another. For this project, we conducted sixteen individual journeys to help us better understand their process and more importantly, where best to implement the “Premium” feature in their journey. Below is an example of one that I personally conducted. (Raw data on the left, on the right is what I present to Sr. Leadership)

Ideation

As mentioned, NN/g’s influence in regards to the way I approach design was both validated and enhanced in every aspect that’s been my UX journey to date. One of the courses I attended focused on varying ideation techniques and one that I found more helpful than most was an approach whereby we annotate each mock or prototype screenshot with greater detail on action points. The screenshots below are examples of that; the full project is available for review under, “Stakeholder Artifacts”.

Usability testing

Usability testing, while positioned as just another pillar of UX research, is in my opinion the most important type of research that we conduct as user experience professionals. From a skill-set perspective, I spent more time in this area than others early in my career as I learned that the most valuable feedback I collected was born from these sessions. I’ve been conducting and leading usability testing sessions for nearly the entirety of my UX career, and the reason I continue to place such high value on this style of research is because the user-feedback I receive, feeds directly into altering the final design more than any other type of research/design I undertake.

The following is one of several sessions conducted for this project that helped us immensely given the complexity of the project. I utilized Morae for the recording software and I typically try to restrict the sessions between fifteen to thirty minutes per session as I’ve learned that from experience, that is about the optimal time-frame to keep people engaged and interested. Also early on I learned that incentivizing people with simple 10-dollar gift cards per session provided me with a much larger pool of willing participants, so I include that as part of my budget when starting a project. The one-sheet of results collected can be found below in the, “Stakeholder Artifacts” section.

stakeholder artifacts

At the end of each project, I’ll typically present all of our collected research findings to any interested Stakeholders so that it is clear why we went in the direction that we did. Below is the one-sheet I presented after the usability sessions were complete, I also normally make the entire “raw” project assets available to illustrate each step in the design process.

I’m not able to show it here as it is an internal company site, but I created an intranet site that hosts the totality of all the project details where anyone interested can view: usability sessions, one-sheets, notes taken, survey data, and an available form for anyone to fill out that would like to request services from the UX Team.

Project 3: product improvement

About a year ago NCM acquired a product called, “Fantasy Movie League” which is marketed as a “fantasy sports-style game” whereby players use their knowledge/skill to pick which group of films will generate the highest, gross revenue for that weekend. After spending time with the application I noticed it reflected more of a single-player experience, and considering the growth that has occurred in regards to the world of fantasy-sports given its online accessibility, I thought it could be re-designed to replicate the success and momentum that fantasy-sports platforms are currently experiencing.

I took a few weeks to sketch out the concept before moving it to a lightweight prototype so that I could user-test it with several employees, and the results were unanimous that with the changes, it would be a much more engaging product. Armed with the testing results as well as the prototype, I forwarded the data to the creative team that leads this project and they loved the idea! They’re slated to begin rolling my changes into the app later this year in phases, beginning with the look/feel so it is consistent with NCM’s existing Noovie content. Below are a few screenshots of the work I sent to the creative team.

Ideation

The first screenshot below is how the platform exists today, and the second is a screenshot of the re-design as well as the proposed changes that would improve design consistency as well as user-engagement.