Leaping into the future to celebrate their Centennial year
OVERVIEW​
The LA Phil needed two new responsive websites for the LA Phil and Hollywood Bowl. The goal was to ease customer pain points, increase ticket sales and donations. We worked with the organization to build a flexible solution that will adapt to future growth.
THE CHALLENGE​
The LA Phil team, a large group with often competing priorities, worked in silos and adopted a workflow more suitable for print. As a result, the existing site was difficult to navigate and to build. Our challenge was twofold: to streamline each division’s priorities and develop a CMS to transition the team’s workflow from print to web.
THE TEAM
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BLITZ Executive Producer
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BLITZ UX Design Lead (Me)
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BLITZ Visual Design Lead
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BLITZ Developers
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LA Phil Project Manager
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LA Phil Team (5 departments)
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3rd Party Ticketing Company
MY ROLE​
UX Design Lead for a 10-month project that launched 2 websites and 2 apps
USER INTERVIEWS​
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When we kicked off the project, the LA Phil provided the team with personas. These ranged from first-time ticket buyers to someone wanting to leave large gifts to the LA Phil in their will. My work focused on 2 primary users, an LA Phil subscriber, and a first-time concert-goer.
These personas were great, except there was a gap in understanding the current pain points in regards to buying tickets and understanding perceptions towards donating. We needed further task analysis research to uncover what that meant to users.
I conducted guerilla-style user interviews which centered around people who fell into two camps: those who are subscribers of the LA Phil and those who attend concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. My goal was to better understand how they go about buying tickets and their thoughts on donating to the LA Phil.
Matt
LA Phil Subscriber
From Initial Persona
Matt wants to learn more about the music and the performers. He's always open to finding new and unique experiences.
Once he finds those unique experiences, he likes to read the details on repertoire and deep info behind the music.
TASK ANALYSIS INSIGHTS
Subscribers want flexibility with the concerts they attend and don't always know the benefits they get for being a subscriber.
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Tasks to improve:
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Swapping concerts within a series
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Showing benefits they get in the context of a concert like concert talks and meet the orchestra
Dena
Hollywood Bowl Concert Goer
From Initial Persona
Dena likes to participate in rich social experiences. She plans for and attends events with friends when she sees shows that pique her interest on social media.
TASK ANALYSIS INSIGHTS
The experience of going to the Hollywood Bowl is frustrating.
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Tasks to improve:
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Knowing the rules of what you can bring to a concert
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Getting to the Hollywood Bowl
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Ordering food to eat at the Hollywood Bowl
JOURNEY MAP
Next, I started to map out some scenarios that addressed the goals of increasing ticket sales and donations. Among the many improvements, the part of the experience I focused on was the check-out page where the goal was to raise awareness that the LA Phil is a non-profit and the benefits of donating.
Smart donation upsell within the cart to raise awareness of the benefits of donating.
SITE MAP
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The user journeys mainly focused on ticket sales and subscriber experiences, which were the primary goals of the project. But, this wasn't a concern for the majority of the departments in the organization, though. The other departments wanted to know how they will be represented in the new site structure. The current structure was bloated and got in the way of understanding what The LA Phil did. The problem to solve with the structure was how to simplify the navigation while also shining a light on how these departments bring value to the LA Phil organization.
LO-FI PROTOTYPE​
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After iterating on the experience map for each persona, I created a low-fidelity wireframe prototype to give the team a feel for the proposed changes. This proved to be an invaluable way to expose development issues, especially with the 3rd party ticketing vendor they were working with.
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A prototype of both the LAPhil and Hollywood Bowl sites was built as we worked through the redesign of each section. A separate prototype was made for the ticketing portion that was managed by a third-party vendor.
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This prototype served to inform the visual design and developers who were often working at the same time. It was the source of truth and reflected all changes agreed on with the LA Phil as well as the development team and visual design.
LESSONS LEARNED
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At times it felt like we had 8 different clients, each with their own priorities. The current site was disjointed with too many levels which confused users who mainly wanted to buy tickets or see what benefits they membership came with. But, the website was the only place the various teams in the organization had to communicate with their specific audience. Getting everyone to agree that selling tickets were the most important thing was the first step.
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Each department could have an entire site devoted to the things they wanted to publish for their slice of the overall audience. For example, the Youth Orchestra needed a place to share photos of past events with students and parents. And the Development team needed to promote fundraising campaigns throughout the year.​
By starting the engagement off by having everyone in the room agreeing that attracting new audiences and showing users how each ticket sale was a donation to this amazing organization was the first step. In the end, providing a seamless ticket purchase process was their priority.
