“A seemingly simple ticket design reflects the designer’s consideration of user experience, emotional transmission and market feedback,” ashin said. “A good designer’s perspective is never limited to the design field. Sometimes problems can be solved by opening your perspective.”
This article is from: Tencent FiTdesign
Bus ticket, for now we may be a little strange, but in memory, it was the feelings of a generation, with the common growth, with the passing of time, let us taste the scenery and joy all the way to every station of life.
The small ticket, though insignificant, is the most faithful record of history. From the emergence of the first tram in 1899 in China and the issuance of the precious first set of tickets, to the emergence of unmanned bus ticket, BRT bus rapid transit and sightseeing special lines, the continuous changes of tickets have witnessed the development of Public transportation in China and even the rapid development of China.
The face value on the ticket reflects the economic situation at that time, the name of the company reflects the social system at that time, the slogan reflects the characteristics of The Times, and even the material conditions of the time can be seen from the paper used to print the ticket.
But with the development of The Times, the bus ticket has gradually faded out of people’s life.
In order to regain the lost beauty, Tencent designers have created a series of electronic tickets for users in combination with the pace of the development of The Times, so that traditional tickets appear in the public view with new life.
Today, you can receive a wechat ticket on your phone as a gift from a friend. On the small ticket may be a picture of Bus No. 107, the required route to and from school when you were a student. It warms my heart to see such a thoughtful ticket.
Designers of wechat tickets try to collect users’ emotions through “wechat tickets” and restore users’ travel scenes, so as to create a warm product and re-establish the deep connection between people and people and travel.
【 Design Dialogue 】
Zhang Bei: at the time of the ticket prototype try to launch, we actually slightly uneasy, worried about today’s young people don’t recognize “ticket” this concept, designers and product managers made some user testing, found that this concept WeChat tickets are popular with many users, this gives us a lot of confidence to continue to do well in this function.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of designing the ticket function?
Zhang Bei: The function of wechat ticket is actually an emotion-oriented functional product extended on the basis of “Tencent ride code”. We aim to break the inherent “experience island” of ride, and let the ticket connect users to communicate emotions.
During a meeting to discuss it were run code product, we think it yourself or with some people actually not by bus every day, but this part of the people have to ride consumption ability, such as he will give the people around, friends to pay the fare, CARDS, etc, or when he wants to tell a friend how to brush a train yards, we knows, Need to have a carrier to “image intuitive” to meet the demand of these hidden between the user, you say he is a strong demand, is also not, but you have to admit that you give to others bought month card, buy a ticket, and this “gift” itself is a strong emotional decision factors, and simply a qr code, it seems, are still not very well to achieve this kind of emotional appeal between users, So we came up with the concept of “ticket” to try to solve these subtle itching spots.
Fortunately, our product manager action quickly, the second day drew a PPT, to decision-making and to promote the idea of large, the most basic prototype we integrate a lot of emotion, such as voice, video, but finally found that the most familiar images and cultural elements is the most can be acceptance and dissemination of experience points, So we can see the present way of some tickets.
Therefore, in Tencent, we actually have such habitual thinking and sensitivity, that is, we pay attention to discover user word-of-mouth and marketing oriented product form, in each product, if we can design similar to the next red envelope level of product experience, for users and Tencent, it is a good expectation.”
Li Cuixia: The experience goal of the ride code product is “a payment tool for wechat users to swipe the code to travel”. Tencent rides code function is already well finished the experience goals, education when using low cost, short user path, experience is fluent, and solve the problem of the various stakeholders, for user layer, can obtain convenient payment, don’t have to worry about “don’t have any change, didn’t take bus card, bus card top-up” problem, think calmly, We found that the ride code didn’t solve the problem of online communication between users, and it always seemed like an efficient tool, so we tried to use the concept of a ticket to give the ride code emotional energy.
Q: What is the positioning of ticket experience design?
Li Cuixia: In the initial brainstorming stage, we came up with a lot of creative schemes. We found that the design opportunity of “giving users free rides in the form of others” was the most close to users, which solved the interests of the “friends” in the stakeholder chain. By getting a ticket from a friend, the user gets access to the ride code and starts using it.
Therefore, for the target users, we conducted several user surveys to verify the authenticity of the idea, and found that the users accepted the ticket and found it interesting, and the acceptance range of the ticket was within 10 yuan. Based on this research, we set the design experience goal of ticket as “convenient, small and low threshold”, aiming to involve more stakeholders in friend communication to solve the experience island. From the point of view of design planning, we have been designing around the experience goal of “emotional benefits and mutual benefit of users”.
Q: How did the specific design plan come into being?
Li Cuixia: The whole design of the ticket is divided into three structural planes.
The first layer is the basic payment function of the bottom layer, which integrates ticket elements and TWO-DIMENSIONAL code functions, so that users can buy, pay, give and use tickets. Use the social relationship chain to spread among friends. In terms of gameplay, we not only allow users to give tickets one to one, but also give tickets one to many, and send them to the group for friends to grab together to increase the entertainment of tickets.
The second layer is the design layer, ticket + payment = face play. In the ticket purchase page, we have abandoned the traditional cold form, and adopted the way of combining ticket face and amount to strengthen the ticket, so that users can intuitively feel the unique design DNA of the ticket.
At the same time, through the study of traditional paper tickets, we extracted three important design elements:
• City, used to strengthen the user’s regional folk recognition;
• The numbering system, which makes expansion preparation for the later operation, is also more consistent with the tonality of tickets;
• Message blessing, blessing to add the emotional temperature of the ticket;
The third layer is the presentation layer, on a par performance, our inspiration from the beautiful China, beautiful city, we want the user to see the tickets can think of happy times, think of him as a child to take a bus ticket good time, see ticket can recall some feelings with the city, he grew up with the city, advances some experiences together, thereby.
Stuart: During the design process, we have been thinking about which perspective can impress the users more? At the beginning, we started from the aesthetic point of view, the design effect is not bad, the picture is very beautiful, but after looking at it for a long time, we will find that such illustrations lack emotional links, unable to evoke the user’s deep memory or emotional resonance. Users will give gifts once because the design is beautiful, but then the motivation to give gifts will continue to weaken, so this is not a good direction, we began to seek a new breakthrough point.
After many in-depth exchanges with users, we found that capturing elements of scenes in daily life can remind them of deep memories, thus narrowing the sense of distance between tickets and users. So we started going in that direction, embedding culture on the face of the ticket, and ultimately creating a set of tickets that can be recalled by the user.
Q: How does this wave of reminiscence tie into the face of the ticket?
Stuart: users: we hope to have a lot of memories of ticket to appear on the screen, it is with the texture and thickness, so the UI design, the main tone is partial quasiphysical is design style, in line with the user psychological cognition to traditional ticket, familiar with visual elements can stimulate the user’s interest, and evoked user implicit memory is the most willing to accept the information.
With the design idea of cultural implantation mentioned above, we began to cooperate with local designers in cities. They first recommended local characteristics such as cultural customs and urban life in miniature, and then we jointly created with illustration techniques to draw pictures that could resonate.
In addition, we also cooperate with some IP to depict the good life in the hearts of users, hoping to hit users from different angles, attract them emotionally and enhance their cognition of our products.
Facts have proved that this approach is correct, in the design of Guangzhou tickets, Guangzhou designers think this is a very meaningful work, put a lot of thought, shared a lot of good ideas. In the internal test, when we sent the tickets of “dingzai congee”, “Qingyun Academy”, “shrimp dumpling dim sum” to the group, everyone’s response is very good, reaction can read guangzhou’s urban style and cultural connotation from the ticket. We also got high recognition from our boss.
That kind of feedback was very meaningful to us, and through design, we really hit the heart of our users.
Q: What expectations do you want the tickets to bring to users?
Sheng Xinxin: The more developed a country is, the greater the proportion of public transportation, the stronger the awareness of environmental protection. Ticket, as the payment carrier of public transport, not only carries the good feelings between users, but also spreads the cultural heritage of a city.
We hope that by taking social interaction and ticket as the window, through the emotional drive of giving tickets between friends, users who usually do not take public transportation can occasionally enjoy a beautiful bus journey with ticket, and make contributions to urban environmental protection travel. The humanistic information conveyed by the ticket face can inspire everyone’s hope for a better life and deliver positive energy.
In the end, wechat tickets have just been launched. Our designers and everyone understand that thinking and expectation are beautiful, and the real experience of users is the most telling. In many people’s eyes, the value of “icing on the cake” is to dig out the service opportunities and emotional connection points of more users. When can let the design become to the user “send carbon in the snow” is the sincere pursuit of designers.
In the words of the designer, “In the design of this matter, we are serious, in the service of users, Tencent, is serious.”
May everyone be happy and happy when they receive that familiar ticket!
