The Discovery experience is transitioning toward a more modular approach to building pages
The Problem
Since Ticketmaster first went online, they’ve had a page-based approach to building their site — meaning nothing was reusable across pages, leading to long dev cycles and UI/UX design inconsistencies. In addition to this, every team worked as independent silos. So the UX issues grew as a fan navigated through the purchase funnel.
The solution
When I joined Ticketmaster, one of the first projects I owned from the ground up was a new component design system for the site’s new React framework. As we designed and built these shareable, reusable components, the next logical evolution was a way to group components and create design patterns out of shareable, reusable modules.
Even though each dev team began adopting the new component library, they also continued operating in silos. I championed a shareable modular approach to anyone who would listen — getting engineers, product managers, and executives onboard.
In 2020, the Discovery team began devising a plan for how they would rebuild their experience using a modular-based approach. Along with the product manager, we brought design and engineering closer together than they had ever been. And through an all-day brainstorming session, we worked out a solution. Reusable components would flow into reusable modules, which would flow into templates, which — when data was applied — would become pages. This approach became known as the Fan Experience Templates.
Guardrails
With a flexible, modular system that could one day be powered by clients through a CMS, it was important to design guardrails. The guardrails we designed came in the form of “content pyramids.” The pyramid is based on the fans’ greatest needs. Understanding fans’ needs involved some research and testing — both through moderated research and live pages. At the top of the pyramid is what the fan knows they want (events). Next is UGC to help them if they’re undecided (reviews). After that is additional content if they’re still not sure (a bio, video, etc). Finally, there is content to help them carry on with their discovery (similar artists).
Content Pyramid
Enforceable guardrails so the fan always has a consistent, predictable browsing experience.
attraction template
The Attraction Template focuses on event listings and special onsale/tour announcements for music artists, sports teams and arts & theater attractions. It helps these attractions promote their events in ways that were never possible on a single page on Ticketmaster.
Sports Attraction Page
A modified event listing that makes finding games easier. The mobile listing style remains unchanged from the one shown above, due to the smaller screen size.
collection template
The collection template is one of the more flexible templates. It supports categories, sub-genres, and any page we need to create in order to curate attractions and events by a common theme. It can display a grid of attractions, or a combination of attractions and event listings, plus additional supplemental content.
location template
The location template highlights the top attractions, and the event listings, performing in locations such as venues and cities.
(older event listing design shown here)
