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Designed at Alloy
The Georgia Aquarium account I am a part of is on retainer, so I am constantly working on different projects within the account. One major project was redesigning the ticket purchasing flow while introducing a new dynamic pricing general admission ticket. Our main priorities were to gracefully introduce this new pricing structure by making sure the user knew it was beneficial for them to have the best Aquarium experience possible as it helps manage crowds (a main pain point the team discovered from the CX Audit done before this project) and use a mobile-first design approach knowing that majority of users purchasing tickets are using their mobile devices.
Process
We began by doing our research to get familiar with how other companies were marketing and designing for dynamic pricing. I used FigJam to organize my findings into inspiration, competitor/market flows, notes/ideas, questions I had for our development and account team, and a draft of the user flow to get an idea of the different paths that needed to be designed. As I dove into this research, I also reviewed the findings from the CX Audit that our team had done before this project that brought to light some pain points guests were having when it came to their experience both physically being at Georgia Aquarium and their digital experiences.
Screenshot of the FigJam board from Discovery
From here we took the findings and inspiration and started the wireframing process. This being my first larger project at Alloy, I wanted to make sure I was following processes that the team already had in place while also bringing my experience and recommendations to the table. I collaborated closely with the developers and designers to make sure we were all on the same page with how we wanted to proceed with such a large project. I used Figma to create wireframes that we then transformed into comps. This was a mobile-first approach knowing that the majority of guests in the past purchased tickets from their phones. I created prototypes for each of the flows we were designing so that developers could have a good understanding of the functionality we were proposing. I added a few annotations utilizing Figma’s new Dev Mode, which also allowed me to easily assign pages and components that were ready for development.
Figma design file seen in Dev Mode
Georgia Aquarium’s Goal:
Encourage guests to plan and purchase tickets in advance with lower pricing on days that have more availability with lower estimated crowds. This plan-ahead approach sets expectations for guests so if they choose a busier day they won’t be surprised by the heavier crowds, but if they choose to plan-ahead with a date in the future they are more likely to have a better experience with lower ticket costs and minimized crowds.
One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to design the optimal experience for choosing a date while showing the day, date, crowd estimation, and pricing all in one box for every date available without overwhelming the user with too much information causing cognitive overload. We ended up going with a week view for mobile with the ability to open up a month filter to jump ahead easily to a future month, and a month calendar view for desktop so that it was easy to choose a future date and see the difference in pricing to encourage planning ahead keeping the Aquarium’s goal in mind.
Mobile week calendar view
Mobile month filter
Desktop month calendar view
I collaborated with the creative team as they applied styling as well as with developers to answer questions that came up along the way. Once development was done we went into the QA stage. We used Jira to keep track of tickets and organize our conversations so that everything was easy to find. The QA process took a lot of time, patience, and collaboration through every single department. I worked with the Analytics and SEO team to make sure we were setting up tracking information that would then help us continue to optimize the flow moving forward.
Results
I am so thankful that I got to work with such a talented team on a dream project with a dream client. The new dynamic pricing purchase flow redesign launched at the end of April 2024 and I am looking forward to watching the results through analytics and Hotjar as they start rolling in!
Updates to come soon!
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