MoviePal
Connect with friends and easily plan movie outings together.
Product Design
Overview
A native mobile app that helps young adults coordinate and book movie theater outings with friends, inspired by a gap I identified in existing movie ticketing platforms.
Challenge
I was intrigued by the growing popularity of movies being released on streaming services and wanted to know: Will movie theaters be here to stay? I suspected fewer people are attending movie theaters in recent years due to this.
Role
Following the design thinking process, I started with research, interviewing six young adults in metropolitan areas to understand how often they go to theaters, what motivates them, and what gets in the way. I also analyzed existing platforms like AMC Stubs, Fandango, and Regal. I found that while competitors had robust rewards systems, none had meaningfully tackled the social, friend-coordination aspect of going to the movies – a gap I saw as a real opportunity.
From there, I moved into ideation, sketching out solutions and blending elements from subscription models like ClassPass to fit my users' needs. I designed a native app to take advantage of features like location services, native sharing, and notifications. After an initial round of usability testing with five participants, I learned that the "Invite a Friend" feature needed clearer language – only 40% of users successfully completed that task – so I identified key improvements for the next iteration.
Solution
Lastly, I built out the visual identity, landing on the name MoviePal and a blue color palette to communicate trust, reliability, and a friendly, social vibe. The result was a prototype that reimagines how friends commit to seeing movies together.
