Enhancing AMC Theatre's Website Usability

INTRODUCTION

This project centered on critically evaluating and enhancing the usability and user satisfaction of the AMC Theatre's website. The objectives were clear: to assess the overall usability, ensure content clarity and completeness, and streamline the navigation to facilitate effortless access to movies, showtimes, theater locations, and amenities. Achieving these goals required a multifaceted UX research approach, incorporating heuristic evaluations, user surveys, interviews, and rigorous usability testing.

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IN-DEPTH RESEARCH & USER CENTERED SOLUTIONS

Heuristic Evaluation:

My heuristic evaluation was guided by Nielsen's principles and enriched by Yablonski's laws such as the "Law of Common Region" and "Law of Proximity", ensuring that related elements on the website were grouped cohesively,enhancing the users' ability to process information efficiently.

User Surveys and Interviews:

Preliminary surveys and detailed user interviews revealed key insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points. My approach to gathering user feedback was deeply influenced by Krug's advocacy for simplicity and clarity, ensuring that questions were straightforward and the insights gained directly informed the design process, aligning with the "Law of Simplicity". This direct feedback from users was instrumental in guiding our design decisions, ensuring they were grounded in real user needs.
I created and distributed surveys via the Qualtrics Tool and received 14 responses that aided in user data analysis. The survey aimed to identify the target audience, understand their attitudes towards theatre-going, uncover usage patterns, validate key e-ticketing features, discover new feature ideas, and identify booking pain points. Here are some questions & responses by the participants.

The interviews aimed to delve into users' habits and preferences for booking movie tickets, identify pain points, and gather ideas for new features. Ashu, a busy software engineer, highlighted difficulties with the sign-in process and finding movies by ratings or genre on the AMC website. He suggested improvements like social media sign-in options and more prominent date selection features. Katie, a technologist and mother, noted challenges with AMC's group booking process, expressing a need for quicker confirmations to accommodate her busy schedule. Overall, the interviews revealed specific user frustrations and desires for a more streamlined and user-friendly booking experience on the AMC website.

Persona Creation and User Stories:

Synthesizing research findings, we developed personas and user stories to humanize and better understand our diverse user segments. The development of personas and user stories was shaped by the "Law of Prägnanz" from Yablonski's collection, ensuring that my design solutions would be perceived as coherent and understandable structures, simplifying complex information.
Personas, fictional characters based on research findings, encapsulate key attributes of different user segments, such as their goals, pain points, and behaviour patterns. User stories, structured as "As a (persona), I want to (do something) so that I can (accomplish my goal)," provide a clear, focused framework for feature development, ensuring every task directly contributes to user goals. Acceptance criteria specify the requirements for a user story to be considered complete, focusing on outcomes rather than implementation methods. This approach ensures design decisions are user-centered, actionable, and measurable, facilitating a more intuitive and satisfying user experience.

STRATEGIC USABILITY TESTING AND PROTOTYPING

Usability Testing

Through engaging in hands-on usability testing with a selection of representative users, we had the opportunity to validate our design solutions through real-world user interactions. This direct involvement offered critical feedback on the proposed redesign of the website. We meticulously crafted the usability testing phase to embody Krug's principles of intuitive navigation and Yablonski's "Law of Expectation." This approach ensured that the website's functionality resonated with users' pre-existing anticipations, effectively minimizing the learning curve and elevating overall user satisfaction.

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Prototyping

In my quest to refine the AMC Theatre website, I crafted high & medium-fidelity prototypes that served as a testbed for potential design solutions, specifically targeting the usability concerns unearthed during our initial research. This iterative prototyping phase was meticulously aligned with key UX principles, notably the "Law of Fitts" which guided us in optimizing the placement and size of interactive elements. By ensuring these elements were easily accessible and adequately sized, I significantly minimized user effort and enhanced the fluidity of navigation. This approach, deeply influenced by Krug's principles of intuitive design, was instrumental in making our redesign endeavors not only more effective but also acutely attuned to the user's needs and expectations.

Here's an interactive prototype link:

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You can view the complete details of the project here.

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REFLECTION ON THE INTEGRATION OF RESEARCH METHODS AND DESIGN THINKING

The AMC Theatre website redesign project significantly broadened my perspective on the importance and impact of integrating both quantitative and qualitative research methods in UX design, propelling me towards becoming a proficient mixed-method researcher. The balanced application of surveys and user interviews illuminated the multifaceted nature of user experiences, combining measurable data with rich, narrative insights. This duality of data not only enriched the design solutions but also deepened my appreciation for the nuanced understanding that mixed-method research affords. Delving into the Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski and Don't Make Me Think Revisited by Steve Krug, I applied theoretical frameworks to practical challenges, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and real-world application. This hands-on experience with seminal UX texts enhanced my competence and confidence in employing user-centric design principles.

Feedback from Professor Ashley Fuller was instrumental in this learning journey, offering targeted critiques that spurred reflection and growth in my design process and thinking. Her insights encouraged a deeper exploration of UX methodologies and fostered a more holistic approach to design challenges. This project not only honed my skills in UX research and design but also underscored the transformative power of expert guidance and theoretical grounding in evolving from a practitioner to a thought leader in the UX domain.

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SUMMARY

Through the AMC Theatre website redesign, I demonstrated mastery in UX design by adeptly combining heuristic evaluations, user research, and prototyping to address usability challenges. The project showcased my ability to synthesize quantitative and qualitative data, applying insights from industry-standard texts to craft intuitive user experiences. Constructive feedback from Professor Ashley Fuller enriched my design thinking, guiding the evolution of my process. This endeavor not only enhanced the website's user experience but also solidified my expertise in creating user-centric digital environments, embodying the principles of effective UX design and reinforcing the importance of a holistic, research-driven approach.