Ticketmaster UK is the parent company of two secondary ticketing services: Seatwave and Get Me In.  Ticketmaster had embarked upon the process of migrating its back office CRM systems for Get Me In and Seatwave on to a single platform. My goal was to own the User Experince and generally improve the overall efficiency of both systems. The team was small, consisting of myself and one other UI designer. We reported directly to the Head of Design and the Head of Product, as well as liaising with Product Owners for the 3 main applications, which included:
1. An event mapping tool to map details of events from both system to a single truth that could be used to publish events onto Ticketmaster website.
2. An order management system for Customer Services dealing with buyers  (often in a highly emotional state).
3. A financial settlement tool to ensure the smooth payment to sellers.

I began by observing the 3 main user groups of each system to understand how they performed their tasks and to establish their primary requirements, as well as their frustrations with the current systems.  It quickly emerged that although the users were struggling with their tools, they had developed a deep attachment to them and were reticent about any changes that would occur as a result of migration. It was important from the outset to build a good rapport with the users, who were experts with their own tools, and to engage with them on a regular basis so they felt they were being listened to and catered for.

Persona for financial settlement tool

Although the user group was small and on-site, I found it useful to create personas as I believe it's essential for everyone involved in a project to have an insight into users' goals and motivations. In this instance, this was particularly important for the offshore development team in Belarus, who had already begun the technical solution. After understanding the users better and evaluating the existing systems, I began by sketching and creating some rough wireframes to try and pull all these applications into a dashboard and a single interface. Ticketmaster already had a broad range of design patterns to use, however these were mostly B2C and in my view not as efficient as something that could be designed for a B2B particularly around the filtering of large datasets. However, after much discussion with Head of UX and Head of Product, it was decided to reuse B2C patterns rather than creating bespoke patterns as it was the most expedient way to meet business needs.  Prototypes were created using these existing patterns, tested with users and Acceptance Criteria around efficiency were met. However, Ticketmaster’s withdrawal from the resale industry due to political pressure meant that no further investment would be made in the project.

Wireframe for finance tool