Assignment One: Cineplex Official Website Analysis INF 2170H Fall 2016 Shuiyao Wang Yuchen Jia Ye Zheng Zi’ang Chen Fall 2016 Assignment 1 INF2170H 1.1 Problem Description Our team chose the Cineplex official website (www.cineplex.com) as the target website for our re-design ​ ​ project. This website is designed, operated and maintained by Cineplex Odeon Corporation, which is a Canadian entertainment company that operates numerous businesses including a modern and fully ​ digitized motion picture theatre circuits in the world. The website serves as the only officially recognized portal through which users can search for information related to all businesses of the corporation. We would like to mention that the Cineplex website went through some minor content changes during our research process, however, in order to be consistent in our project, we decided to focus on the previous version which was in use until Oct. 15th. During the initial stage of familiarizing with the website (primarily by clicking through and doing some background research), our team found out some information architecture problems that gave rise to operation obstacles and damage user experience. Organization System: According to our observation, the major organization problem of the website is information misclassification within the navigation bar and the “find showtime” filter. For example, our team thinks that it is confusing to put “group event” label under “Theater” in the global navigation , because when we first saw the label “Theater”, we naturally considered it as the place for finding theaters, not events held in the theater. (Figure 1) Figure 1 Global Navigation Same problem occurred when we tried to refine our research in the search filters area. When we searched for movies by Genre, we surprisingly found that there was a label called “Foreign Language” which certainly is not regarded as a genre on its own. (Figure 2) 2 Fall 2016 Assignment 1 INF2170H Figure 2 Search filters Navigation System: The navigation system of the website is considered to be well-designed by our team because when we observed and performed certain tasks at the beginning of the project, as the first time users ourselves, we can navigate through the website using the global navigation bar and did not get lost. However, there is a minor flaw we found. The “Return to homepage” logo on the top left corner does not function consistently in all subpages. The Rent/Buy button navigates users to an external website and the “go home” logo does not link back to the home page. Labeling System: During our exploration of the website, we got confused several times by the name of the labels in the navigation bar, for example, the label “Rent/Buy” and “Corporate Product”. The former one actually direct users to an external website called “Cineplex Store” where users can buy or rent digital copy of movie. However, When we first saw the name “Rent/Buy”, some of us thought it was an entrance for buying movie tickets. Similarly, the “Corporate Product” actually refers to the product Cineplex sell to other companies for rewarding their employees, not simply the products made by Cineplex. Mislabeling caused many misunderstanding during our research and it was an essential part to be analyzed in the card sorting activity. Search System: A critical problem with the search system is that it does not support keyword research well enough in the search filters. when we entered keywords that indicate the landmark buildings near the theater instead of the precise name of the theater, no hint was shown for indication. For those users who do not know the name of the theater, this will be a serious problem and they have to check for the answer from other sources. In order to validate our assumption and acquire feedbacks and suggestions from the users, we designed tasks in the following process and the result will be shown in the User Analysis part. 1.2 Justification for the Project The information architecture problems highlighted above are all critical problems that seriously damage user’s operation experience and obstruct the efficient user of the website, which are bad for both users and 3 Fall 2016 Assignment 1 INF2170H stakeholders. It can be especially difficult for first time users to apprehend all functions the website provide and the exploration process is also challenging and time consuming. As Cineplex theaters circuits served approximately 77 million customers annually and this official website is the only online channel for getting corporate information, the website is supposed to be user friendly and highly efficient so that more and more users would choose to use the online service. 2.1 Context Analysis Cineplex’s business strategy, which is released on the Cineplex website (Cineplex/Corporate Information), addresses that the corporate will “continue to enhance and expand the existing infrastructure and service offerings to attract new customers and increase revenue per guest”. In order to achieve the goal, the Cineplex website as a digital infrastructure and online service portal must improve the user experience and efficiency. Therefore, the overall goal of our team is to gradually improve the overall information architecture of the Cineplex website and promote the user experience after all three projects are completed. The short-time goal for the first part of the Cineplex website redesign project is to evaluate the website according to the four aspects of visualizing information architecture in order to find out major user experience problems to work on. Then we will invite users to participate in the user research session which consists of two parts (interview and card sorting) to elicit their needs for the current IA structure of the website. After discussion, our team agreed on the conclusion that the primary tasks for using the website are buying movie tickets and searching for movie-related information. We realized from the background research that the main assets of Cineplex Inc. are the theaters they own and most of their other businesses are complementary services that cover all service lines within a theater. Except for the main tasks, users can also perform secondary tasks such as selecting add-on movie experience (e.g. UltraAVX and IMAX), searching for movie trailers, booking party rooms and finding jobs, etc.. It is also important to identify the intended audience and stakeholders of the Cineplex website. Although this website is intended to serve anyone who has a computer terminal and would like to acquire relevant corporate information (regardless of his/her gender, age and education background), we can define different group of user avatars according to their purpose and frequency of using the website(Figure 3). Our team set up some premises and scopes for intended audience that is taken into the consideration. The users should live in Canada, understanding either English or French and have access to the Internet. The primary users are people who frequently perform primary tasks, that is, buying tickets and searching for information from Cineplex website. The secondary users can either be those who do perform primary tasks but less frequently or people who perform secondary tasks very frequently. Other people who seldom use the website for any purpose are marked as inactive users who have little economic contribution for the website. 4 Fall 2016 Assignment 1 INF2170H Figure 3 Define user Our team set up some premises and scopes for intended audience that is taken into the consideration. The users should live in Canada, understanding either English or French and have access to the Internet. The stakeholders of Cineplex website can be divided into two groups: The first group consists of external stakeholders of the Cineplex Odeon Corporation, such as customers (users of the website), suppliers(food suppliers),advertiser(website ads, ad opportunity on the bottom of the page),investors and movie companies who have business relationship with the corporation. While the second group include internal stakeholders such as stockholders, board members and employees of the Corporation. As internet is gaining prominence nowadays, people (esp. young people) prefer buying movie tickets online instead of in person. According to a recent research, more than 26% of the movie tickets are sold online in Canada (Wired Magazine, 2015) and the figure keeps growing. The existence of the Cineplex website saves the movie viewers from queuing in long line in the theater and provides with another way to buy tickets at flexible time and place. In a past-paced social environment, this website satisfies the need for flexibility which is extremely important for those who are on a tight working schedule. Users can search for screening timetables and all movie-relevant information easily through the website and buy tickets online whenever they want. The Cineplex website currently applies both top-down and bottom-up information architecture. The top-down structure dominates if users type in keywords such as “Cineplex” or “Cineplex theaters” in the search engine and enter the website from the main page When users are in any of the subpages, they can tell where they are by reading the titles on the top and navigate to other subpages and homepage easily. 2.2 Content Analysis The technique of content analysis provides a good insight of what are being presented in the existing web pages. This section of the assignment aims to demonstrate selected contents from Cineplex, and furthermore, perform content analysis on the selected pages. These pages are, namely, Corporate 5 Fall 2016 Assignment 1 INF2170H Products, Theater Technology, Investor Relations and Showtime. These pages are selected for our content analysis because they cover a various types of users of the Cineplex website, such as business development coordinators and movie fans. In speaking of the content gathering method, “Noah’s ark” is deployed, and in addition to “Noah’s Ark”, “ROT” method is also utilized.