Filmgarde UX App Case Study

6 min readJan 18, 2021

Disclaimer: This is written together along with Ranseur Teo and Vanessa.T.

Filmgarde was founded in Singapore in 2007. Being one of the minority cinemas in Singapore, having 4 cinemas and 20 screen halls island wide. Filmgarde has future plans on reaching more audience with the launch on an online website and mobile application¹.

With user being spoil with movie choices, people are having difficulties deciding which movie to watch via mobile application. In additional, with more competitors venturing to improve user convenience², the team believe by improving the current mobile application , it will drive more engagement and brand loyalty.

So how might we improve the stickiness of the existing customer using Filmgarde mobile application?

The goal of this project is to:

Improve the stickiness for the current users using Filmgarde app
Create additional revenue

Research

The team had used different research methods in gathering information:

User Interview
Expert Interview
Competitors’ Analysis

User Interview

The team had conducted an interview with 10 participants to gather feedback on purchasing movie ticket(s) for Filmgarde application. There were a few highlights that was being brought out from the interview:

Small font size on movie’s title
Many of the users commented that the movie’s title font size is too small. Hence, in order to select the movie they wish to watch, they will look for the movie poster instead of looking on movie’s title.
Hard to choose movie availability
Most cinemas (including Filmgarde) would release their movie schedule on Wednesday afternoon for the week. However, the display of movie availability still allowing user to choose day where movie schedule has not been release.
User does not know the seating allocation screen can be scroll horizontal
Many of the user does not know the seat allocation screen can be scroll horizontal. Hence, many user were surprised that they had selected the center seats are not center after all.

Expert interview

The team has also done an expert interview against the application and identified a few key points to improve the application:

Gestalt Principles, Law of Proximity
Improving movie’s information
Improve displaying movie’s availability

Gestalt Principles, Law of Proximity

The team believed the screen that display movie information could be better improve with Gestalt Principles, Law of Proximity. Although the movie information has been grouped with movie poster, movie title etc, the proximity between each movie information is too close.

For example, the movie title called “Downhill”, is the movie title refer to above movie poster or below movie poster ?

Improving movie’s information

Based on Nielsen Norman Group Research³, the team believed the movie information should be concise and content focus rather than listing information to user.

Improve displaying movie’s availability

The team believed that since the movie schedule for the remaining week is not out, it should not provide accessibility to user to select on.

Conclusion of Expert Interview

The team after evaluating Filmgarde application realised that the application is converting a website application into mobile application. Which also explained the seat allocation screen could be scrolled horizontally.

Unfortunately, converting a website application into mobile application would not work due to mobile screen size constraints and the usage⁴.

Competitors’ Analysis

The team had researched existing competitors’ to identify the opportunity/gaps. The purpose of this research is to see how and what other competitors’ are offering to improve the brand of loyalty.

Based on the competitors’ analysis, we have discovered that Golden Village provided many perks for casual customers and moviegoers.

For example, for casual customers who wants to watched movie, they are able to get $2.50 off when using DBS paylah to purchase their movie tickets.

For moviegoers, Golden Village have exclusive merchandise for their own members such as contest.

Prioritization Matrix

The team had came up with prioritization matrix to understand user’s needs and benchmark against effort by organization:

Introducing… Sam

Based on the research information we had gathered, we created a persona for the application:

Customer Journey Map

Design

Taking account of our user personas and customer journey mapping, the team had designed on the following :

Task flow
Sketching
Wire Frame

Task Flow

The team had design task flow for Sam(persona):

Sketching

The team have sketched different version of screens and voted them:

WireFrame

The team had created wireframe on illustrating the application before prototyping:

Solution

Existing Application

Proposed Application

Prototype

The solution of Filmgarde app is listed below:

To view Figma file for Prototype.

Testing

The team had tested using Guerrilla Testing to gather the feedback for the prototype.

Guerrilla Testing

The team had found 5 participants on Guerrilla Testing for the prototype. The good , bad and improvement feedback for prototype is listed below:

Good Points

Overall user flow is alright
Straightforward booking process
Font choice is easy to read
Love the little touch for movie synopsis such as the cast picture and ratings

Bad Points

Does not provide countdown of user session timing
No confirmation of booking

Improvement

Display a wider variety of food & beverage instead of few combos
Colour selection for the seats
Reward information

Future

While the team would make improvement on the prototype based user feedback from the Guerrilla Testing, the team also thought of the future opportunities.

Partnership with Netflix screening Netflix original movie

With the increase popularity with online video streaming service such as Netflix⁵, the team believed that it could be a good opportunity to partner with Netflix in screen Netflix original movie.

By screening Netflix original movie, it would also create opportunity of social gathering . In addition, Filmgarde has a better movie sound quality system (AuroMax immersive 3D sound) which surpass other competitors in providing to audience.

Summary

The team would look into how to improve stickiness of using Flimgarde application. Through research, the team understand user’s needs and wants. From there, the team creates different sketches of screen before proceeding to prototyping. The team also did a test against user with proposed prototyping to gather feedback.

The team hope that by improving the stickiness of Filmgarde application, it would drive more engagement of brand loyalty and increasing revenue. Leading Filmgarde to be recognise as one of the leading movie entertainer provider.