Tickets please
I spend a lot of time considering user experience, usually in the context of a product or service I am designing.
UX is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability and pleasure a user experiences when using a product.
This covers applications, websites, anything digital. How do you feel when using an iPhone application? When you peel back that email to reveal the delete button in Mail, you get a nice feeling from the slick interaction. Satisfaction, it worked how I expected. The same extends to the tangible world. The satisfaction you get when screwing up that overdue phone bill and throwing it in the bin for example.
As the world digitises, these tangible User Experiences we are used to are evolving, and sometimes disappearing. Take concert tickets. As an avid live music fan, I have been to hundreds of gigs over the last 18 years. From 90,000 capacity festivals to 10 guys in a toilet. One thing used to be consistent from all of these experiences, the Ticket.
The requirement (or greed) of large ticketing corporations to cut costs has doomed the printed ticket to an early grave
As services evolve online, things speed up, become more accessible, more convenient. The ticket is fast becoming a thing of the past. The requirement (or greed) of large ticketing corporations to cut costs has doomed the printed ticket to an early grave. I’m not suggesting we continue to demolish the Rainforests, simply that ticketing companies think smart and go recycled.
I recently purchased two standing tickets from a large well known ticketing company. The face value of each ticket was £35.00. I paid £150.00, including around £20.00 for Postage and Packaging. I received the tickets in the post, A4 laser printed tickets. I paid £10.00 for each piece of paper. These were eTickets, which I am perfectly capable of printing myself had I been sent the link. I’d been done. By a large unaccountable corporation, who are no better than ticket touts. Had I been sent a nice, shiny pair of printed tickets, I may have forgotten the extortion.
The ticket, from my perspective, used to be part of the experience. The same thing is happening to Vinyl and CD artwork as digital downloads march forwards in popularity. We are not getting our money's worth as consumers. The ticket was the artwork of the concert a lasting memento, a memory. I have collected nearly all my tickets since I started my concert going account back in May of 1997 watching Foo Fighters at the Manchester Apollo. I still have the faded ticket stub.