Information Architecture & First Wireframes

After going through the pain points users from the existing Tablelist app, I was able to better organize the information presented so that the core functions would shine more clearly through the noise. To do so, I created the information architecture to map out how each page corresponded to each other and make the entire process as seamless as possible. As James Pokiver at TopTotal describes information architecture: “Just like a blueprint, IA provides designers (as well as product development and engineering teams) a bird’s-eye view of the entire product”. By organizing the existing pages and what they provided the overall experience, I was able to see that there were several redundancies. On the navigation bar, there was an entire page devoted to promoting the “Diamond membership” option for users. As the reviews pointed out, this led to people feeling like the app was a cash-grab and not looking to keep their users’ best interests at heart. It was an easy choice to remove this page and instead I opted to include the promotional section as a part of the homepage after the primary sections that you can then click if interested to view the perks of being a member. In addition, it does not aid the sequential process for users which Tubik Studio describes as “The sequential structure creates some kind of a path for the users. They go step-by-step through content to accomplish the task they needed”.

For the homepage, I kept the search bar at the very top because I felt it was extremely important to aid a user’s process but refined the rest of the page. The existing app offers a spotlight section with a selection of venues based on how many people had just purchased tickets at the selected venues. This can be limiting for venues that don’t have events every night or offer select nights and so it could hurt users that were looking for a venue that isn’t open on that day. The next two sections were important and include both a selection of venues with the option to view all venues and the same for events. Both of these are very important and directly relate to the primary purpose of the app, however, the app displays three next to each other which all compete for screen real-estate and make the page feel very busy. Users find it difficult to make choices when there are many options present and so by making the tiles larger and showing less at a time, it is easier to for people to choose what they want.

The next step I took was to add a “favorites” page for users to save their favorite venues and events. This decision was motivated by watching someone else interact with the existing app and struggle to find a venue they had previously looked for. While the user was eventually able to find the venue by searching manually and scrolling through the results, the decision to choose a club often includes weighing several options and the process to do so should be as simple as possible. The favorites page now allows users to simply tap a heart icon on venue or event pages to look through them at a later date. The page also shows venues and events recommended by the app based on their previous selections that they may like. Similar to the Spotify recommended playlists, having personally customized selections can often lead to finding hidden gems. In summary, by focusing on the core features of the app, users will have an easier time understanding what they’re supposed to do and help remove struggle from the process.