UniversityTickets’ print-at-home tickets were designed for efficient validation scanning, using redundancy and easy readability, to provide a superior on-campus event experience for attendees.
Summary
Solved readability and usability issues with print-at-home PDF tickets to decrease time required to scan tickets and seat guests—while maintaining features like custom-branding and custom content and accounting for edge cases.
Solution Preview
Problem
Low scan rate due to ticket scanning line not moving fast enough.
Research
At an event using UniversityTickets’ devices and tickets, I conducted contextual observation of clients scanning tickets and customers handling their tickets.
Attendees were folding tickets in quarters or in thirds. This was causing creases to be placed in the barcodes due to where they were placed. These creases made it difficult for the scanners to read the barcodes.
Sometimes attendees would even hold out a ticket for scanning and cover the barcode with their thumb without noticing they were doing so.
A few tickets were misprinted in such a way that the bottom quarter of the ticket didn’t print or the ink on the right half was smudged so much as to make the barcode un-scannable.
Sometimes I stepped in to assist with scanning a few tickets and noticed that when I wanted to great a customer by name that it was difficult to quickly locate that information at a glance.
Analysis
Primary Issues
Barcodes couldn’t be read by scanners
Key information was difficult to quickly locate on the tickets visually
Holding - Barcode Covered
Original (not designed by Leo)
Mis-Printing - Barcode Distorted
Original (not designed by Leo)
Folding - Barcode Distorted
Original (not designed by Leo)
Water Smudging - Barcode Distorted
Original (not designed by Leo)
Ideation
Vision
Goals for my design.
Design
Old Ticket
First Concept
Final Concept
Solution
Fold lines shown in red
I provided specifications for the heights of each section of the ticket as well as graphical assets to the developer.
(Click Image to Enlarge)
(Click Image to Enlarge)
Old Ticket
New Ticket
Results
Tickets Scanned
Takeaways
Future
Areas for future exploration.
I would like to add alternate layout options that clients can choose from, to offer more flexibility. A quarter-folded layout that looks like a mini book is something I’d like to explore.
I would research the different E-Ticket needs of the four main client types: theater, student activities, athletics, and graduations. Perhaps offering an E-Ticket layout tailored to the needs of each would be better than a single layout balancing the needs of all four.
For additional measures of success I would have liked to compare two events at the same school of equal size using the original and the new e-ticket designs. I would compare the amount of time a user spends in line, user satisfaction with ease of finding their seat, and number of times a scanner's laser is activated vs number of times a barcode is successfully scanned.
About UniversityTickets
UniversityTickets was a live-event box office software solution for schools to sell tickets to on-campus events; before being acquired by AudienceView in 2019.
Problem
Poor event experience due to long time in scanning line caused by multiple issues with barcodes and hard to find seating information on PDF tickets.
Outcome
15% average increase in tickets scanned for events
Deliverables
✅ User research
✅ Wireframes
Tools Used
🔨 OmniGraffle
Tasks
User Research
Redesign of print material
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