Eventfinda Pro Ticketing Platform

Overview

Background

I joined Eventfinda as a user interface designer and worked alongside a product design manager and a small team of back-end developers. The product design manager and I were responsible for updating the previous version of Eventfinda Pro to modern user interface design standards. Over a period of 8 years, we added new features and updated existing features to meet our clients’ needs.

• We turned ideas into usable products.

  The product design manager and I collaborated closely for a number of years where we borrowed Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote and took on the design philosophy that we needed to “skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been”. We wanted to create features that we thought our clients would need and be proactive, rather than react to our clients’ needs which could be too slow. We are proud of products that we designed that solved a number of problems for our clients.

• Working with the product design manager was a great learning experience and an absolute pleasure at every step.

  The product design manager is a real leader and innovator in the web design industry in Australia and New Zealand with over 20 years of experience. He passed on a lot of knowledge and wisdom in a number of areas, from researching, prototyping, project management, communication, design, coding, to testing.

• We established a design theme.

  It was important to us to utlise the best features of the Bootstrap framework and come up with our own customised and highly reusable components and assets that both designers and developers could utilise throughout the application.

• We improved usability.

  One of the largest problems with the previous version of the application was that certain features and products were not easily found and were buried too deep. Some common pieces of feedback that we frequently received from our users was that some features required too many clicks to reach, and some users did not know that we provided certain features because they were not easily discoverable. In the new version of Eventfinda Pro, we wanted to surface these features and reduce the number of clicks. Also, we aimed to streamline the application by grouping common features together in the new application, rather than combining different features together (such as managing ticketing and looking at reporting on the same page).

Process

Our process at Eventfinda is to follow defined phases in the design and development process, starting from brainstorming through to launch. We involved all of the major stakeholders within the team, including the product design manager, developers, CEO, CTO, sales manager, sales agents, and customer support.

• Brainstorm

  Conduct user research, competitor analysis, and feature mapping, discuss with clients and stakeholders, and prepare ideas for concept designs.

• Produce Conceptual Designs

  Design interactive prototypes and production-ready features using prototyping software and HTML/CSS/Bootstrap. Produce style guides and annotated comps for all other team members to use as a reference for development.

• Conduct Stakeholder Workshops

  Present concept designs to relevant stakeholders and/or clients, communicate reasonings behind design decisions and how they match the goals of the company with the needs of the end user, gather feedback, and refine designs through iterations.

• Refine Code & Development Handover

  Refine HTML/CSS/Bootstrap code then partner with product design manager to handover the production-ready feature designs to the development team.

• Conduct Testing and Code Review

  Perform cross-browser and cross-device testing for usability and performance, fix bugs and analyse code for efficiency and semantics.

• Launch and Post-Project Review

  Collaborate with product design manager and development team to launch the feature to live servers and conduct a post-project review.

Designs

Events Dashboard

As a user creates events and sells tickets, they will be able to access all of the important features for managing their events and have a quick glimpse at their events’ sales data.

Create Event

The Create Event page is very complex since event promoters and organisers have a wide range of requirements for setting up their event: location, categories, session dates and times, description, websites, and embargo date and time.

Choose Ticketing

Even though Eventfinda offers a ticketing service, event promoters are still able to add their event to the Eventfinda network even if they are ticketing with another agent. Our ticketing options provides them a range of options to fulfill their needs with an easy-to-use interface.

Create Ticket Type

Once the event promoter has set up their event, if they have selected Eventfinda Ticketing as their ticketing agent, they will need to set up their ticket types with options for pricing, description, sessions, and onsale/offsale times. These options require a simple but elegant user interface so that an event promoter can efficiently set up their tickets.

Reporting

Event promoters sure love their reports, and Eventfinda Pro offers a wide range of report types with different charts, tables, filters, and export options to suit their needs.

Scan Tickets

Eventfinda Pro offers a scan tickets tool that allows event promoters, organisers and support staff to scan tickets using their laptop, or the optional USB scanner.

Conclusion

I am very proud to be part of a team that offers a world-class web application to our clients so that they feel in total control of their events’ ticketing and marketing needs with clever tools in one easy-to-use platform. Event promoters have very complex requirements and Eventfinda Pro has a lot of features that allow them to reach their audience and sell more tickets.

By using the Bootstrap framework, it allowed us to rapidly prototype and develop features efficiently without the need of using wireframing tools. We felt that we would spend as much time coding a prototype using HTML, CSS and Bootstrap as we would using a wireframing or prototyping tool. This also allowed us to pass the designs to the development team quicker than normal. Bootsrap also allows us much more redundancy, such as situations where the design team is too busy working on a project, the development team can easily use the range of buttons, form elements, components, and features that Bootstrap provides without requiring the assistance of the design team.

Eventfinda Pro is always evolving and this amount of flexibility allows us to produce new features and improve existing features with speed and ease.