A digital sales platform to market and sell event tickets and exclusive experiences, in support of an exclusive contract with the International Olympic Committee, covering the 2024, 2026 and 2028 Olympic Games.
Roles & Responsibilities
• Senior Product Designer
• Design Team Lead
• Research & Competitor Analysis
• Dev Handoff Prep
Team
Rithi Gupta, Project Manager
James Porter, Senior Product Designer
Sihan Zou, Product Designer
Herbert WIllis, UI Designer
Sarikka Raman, UX Designer
The Problem
Users
Enthusiasts of the Olympic Games considering attending in person.
Scope & Constraints
• Conceptualize a responsive digital platform for the next three Olympic Games (2024, 2026 & 2028), that can integrate with existing payment/processing tech stack.
• Olympic event tickets can not be sold individually, but must be accompanied by a hospitality offering.
• Identify user subsets to conceive a holistic information architecture, to addresses the diverse needs of various end users.
• Deliver final product, fully resolved within 6 months from project initiation to fully tested live platform.
The Solution
Assist Olympics enthusiasts in identifying the critical factor for them, to identify and purchase their ideal Olympic experience.
Discoverability
Make it easy to find events by –
• Sport.
• Date.
• Participating Country.
• Competition Round.
• Historical Venue.
Peace of Mind
Users are investing a good amount of disposable income, make it easy to –
• See exactly what is and isn’t available.
• Understand a city/region they may be unfamiliar with.
• Follow the specifics what is being offered.
• Make easy and informed decisions.
Build an Experience
• Choose Dates for Travel.
• Target Specific Events.
• Choose a ‘Focus’ of Their Experience (History & Art, Family Friendly, Active & Wellness, Culinary, etc.).
• Select a “Level of Service” for Accommodations and Amenities.
The Process
Each step in the process underwent rigorous internal design team reviews and required approval from all relevant stakeholders before progressing to the next phase.
Understanding the Space
• What has been identified, by previous market research, as being critical factors in the purchasing decision?
• What is iconic or unique about the specific Olympic games?
• What have the sales and operations teams determined will be the offerings we can support?
• What has been agreed to with our partners, the IOC and Paris 2024 committees?
Competitor Analysis
• In the words of Stanley Kubrick, “Everything has already been done, every story has been told, every scene has been shot. It’s our job to do it one better”.
• There is no need or benefit to recreating from scratch, tapping user’s familiarity with an established pattern leverages intuition. Besides, even unsuccessful solutions can provide valuable parts.
• How have other platforms approached the marketing and sale of Olympic ‘experiences’?
Start with a Wide Scope
• How can all use cases be accommodated with one entry point?
• What are the major similarities and differences to what is being offered?
• Discovery must be easy and intuitive, for the user who knows exactly what they want and the ‘browser’ looking to be inspired.
Determine Each User’s Decision Making Journey
• Identify and account for each decision that must be made.
• Map the progression of the user, from discovery to check-out.
• Recognize pain points and diagnose contributing factors, to determine potential solutions.
Combine User Journeys Revealing Potential Information Architecture
• What would the site look like, if all use cases had the same entry points?
• Junctures or transition points, if users are not finding what they want?
• Shared flows?
Wireframes & Medium Resolution Designs
Once the overall structure of the site was agreed upon, our team dove into the process of ideating and iterating the basic layouts of all aspects of the discovery and decision making portions of the site. As with most projects, outside of the basic flows, consideration had to be given to accessibility (WCAG) standards and responsive design.
Some of the unique variables to apply here had to do with aligning the ‘look and feel’ with the Paris 2024 brand guides (fonts, imagery, etc.). While this would be refined in the next step, it was important to start the process early, to ensure cohesive layouts.
Leveraging our enthusiasm and rigorous internal and external reviews, this process progressed through multiple iterations rapidly.
High Resolution UI and Handoff
Once the intricacies of all flows was resolved, we focused on translating UX designs to refined, dev-hand-off ready flows. This required –
• Defining final UI elements (which had been in process during the previous steps by the UI designer.
• Adding any necessary branding/partnership assets (for example: visa branding, etc.).
• Validating appropriate licensing for all visual assets/imagery.
• Ensuring complete and easy to understand annotations for all assets.
The result was a beautiful and functional platform that aligned with the official Paris 2024 site.
Conclusions
While I led the design team for a majority if this project, through handoff to the digital engineering team, I was no longer at Endeavor when the Paris 2024 platform launched. I had decided to join a former colleague at an exiting startup.
The experience we created was enjoyable, informative and easy to use.
While maintaining contact with former team members, apparently there was a severely underestimated scope on the engineering side, as to how they were going to implement and manage the massive inventory required to support this venture.
This delayed the launch of the platform for 3-4 months past the projected goal, going live in late 2022.
Outcome & Results
Ultimately, from everything I have heard first hand and read, the platform performed well and the Paris 2024/On Location partnership was a success, serving tens of thousands of guests daily.
There will undoubtedly be many improvements before MIlan-Cortina 2026, but as a first run in a never before developed vertical all teams involved have much to be proud of.
Some insights and reactions can been seen here –
Scott Jernigan, On Location’s chief commercial officer
Providing fans an option when traditional avenues have sold out
Lessons Learned
If given access to site metrics, sales conversions and direct feedback captured by the sales team, there would be many more insights and learnings I would benefit from and could share. Having left the Product team at Endeavor Digital a few months before the site launched 2 years ago, I unfortunately can not speak to any of that incredible valuable retrospective data.
The few valuable insights I gained while involved with this project were –
• Having a ‘bottle-neck’ of knowledge, in this case the inner-workings of the in-house built inventory and sales software, is a dangerous situation. I was baffled on many occasions that many essential requests had to go through one individual. This led to extended delays, at times by necessity, although at times by outward belligerence.
• When having to make a wide range of assumptions, while addressing a new and unique selling proposition, it is imperative to note all assumptions, to be tested against future data and metrics. Having a repository is essential, as what might first appear to be minor conjecture, can quickly affect and inform a wide range of subsequent decisions.
• Gather all of the data you can…via tracking software, direct feedback, follow-up contact and any other source available. Get creative and make it a priority! Although it may seem obvious, for multi-year, multi-event ventures like the IOC/On Location partnership, applying valid insights will maximize future revenue and enhance the customer experience.
Recommendation
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with James as a part of a small but mighty product design team. James is the kind of UX designer who really approaches the whole picture and is able to identify gaps and needs holistically, as well as zoom in; into very high fidelity details of his flows and briefs. He is the kind of designer who has the experience, attention to detail, and kindness to sustain a high-quality effort, and is simply not afraid of hard work. He very often lends a helping hand or mentorship moments to others. I have seen him work thoroughly and steadily on complex projects, as he is someone I trust implicitly to lead and follow through. He is able to unblock himself, which can be a difficult skill amid varying levels of product management and business limitations. He has a great handle on his own acceleration and learning when it comes to UX patterns and best practices, in addition to modern interactions and ideas he is always keen to explore. If it’s not already sufficiently clear, I’d be lucky to work with James again.“
Laura Zheng
Vice President of Design & Creative
Endeavor, Aug 2018 – Dec 2021
