Mobile App Rewrite

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS parks

Date

2023

End Client

Work done by Rebecca Bar for Chaos Theory Studios

Role

UX Research
UX Design
UX Strategy
UX Writing
UI Design
Design Systems

12X

Revenue in the first month of launch on Android than on all platforms the entire year before

In 2022 Universal Parks and Resorts were at a crossroads regarding the customer facing digital services. Soon Universal would be announcing the opening of a brand new park in Orlando Florida (EPIC UNIVERSE™,) that would allow them to more directly compete for Florida Tourism.

To support this launch, they needed to overhaul and modernize their park guest mobile app.  Universal recognized the need to assign expert UX resources to the project who can identify guest needs and expectations and work closely with cross-functional teams to implement critical UX enhancements and new features in a fast-paced code rewrite environment. That’s were we came in.

HANDS-ON DESIGN LEADERSHIP AND OPS

We were trusted with research, strategy and design for all of the e-commerce aspects of Universal guest mobile app – Wallet, Mobile Food and Delivery Ordering, and Special Express Pass promotional offers like Contextual – ‘After 4pm’ and Third Tier express.

IMPACT:

12X+ REVENUE = MORE REVENUE IN THE FIRST MONTH OF LAUNCH (FEB 2024) ON ANDROID THAN ON ALL PLATFORMS IN THE ENTIRE OF 2023

Create a new mobile experience that immerses, and does not detract park guests from the EPIC experiences in Universal’s Portfolio of Parks and Resorts.
Provide UX leadership and build the UX infrastructure of the rewrite team to support designing, building, and shipping new app features and functionalities at a pace not attempted by Universal in the past. A reworked UX organization was required to build new systems and methodologies to support the increases production output, while not degrading existing user experience
Build a new Universal
Design system to ensure consistent design across all Universal Park and Resort Digital products.

This case study is broken into 2 part

UX leadership and ops
The features we designed ( Universal Parks Wallet, Mobile Food and Delivery Ordering, and Contextual Express (after 4pm Express passes) )

Due to NDA’s, we won’t be sharing a lot of our strategy and thinking work here, more the results and final deliverables.

Hands-on design leadership and ops

Cross Teams Management and Collaboration

Cross functional: We interfaced on a day-to-day basis with Product, development, business, marketing and leadership to negotiate and create user-centered solutions in a complex environment with limited development bandwidth and changing Product and business goals.   

Multi-disciplinary: We collaborated with other UX and CX teams to ensure consistency across features and omni-channel experiences.

‘Contextual’ Express - Push app notification copy testing for marketing

Ou goal was to promote the ‘after 4pm Express’ offer in the most attractive yet transparent way possible so guests understand the time limited nature of the offer’s availability and usage in the parks.

Legacy Feature Evaluation

We performed audits and testing of long-standing features whose usage had never been tracked or evaluated.

This process led to data-driven and human-centered decisions to retain, modify, or remove features based on user engagement and effectiveness.

Our on-site observation confirmed the importance of offering park guests alternative ways of entering their table number

Strategy, Implementation, and Improvement

Created a cohesive understanding and execution path for the products’ user experience that aligns with the overall business objectives and shared user insights into every step of that process.

This enabled us to close disconnects between different stakeholders and departments and find resolutions that met business goals and improved user experience  

The mobile rewrite went beyond improving the existing UX and modernizing the existing UI. We ideated and implemented new key features such as the Universal Wallet, Parks +, Onboarding and more. We also supported efforts to plan and ideate future work.

UI and Visual Design Overhaul

A substantial improvement in the app’s UI and visual design, focusing on consistency, usability and bringing design patterns up to date to meet users expectations in 2024.

The design drew on best practices from contemporary applications, making the app more user-friendly and visually appealing.

MFDO (Define feature)

With the development of Mobile Food and Drink Ordering, Universal Parks and Resorts will enable users to order food from select venues in the mobile application for an enhanced user experience.  

MOBILE FOOD AND DELIVERY - ADD TO ORDER

MFDO is the first and only feature to implement a shopping cart irectly inside the app insteaad of routing a guest to purchase other things (like express passes, tickets, etc) through a browser-based Buy Flow

Contextual Express (define feature)

Wallet / Gallery

Commerce Calendar

Global Design System (GDS) Enhancement

We created components for current features that are modular enough to be easily reused for future use cases.

The system gives Universal the ability to scale design processes and create concept mockups and create prototypes quickly for more efficient implementation and concept ideation.

Design Documentation, Hand-off and Long-Term UX support

We handed off detailed design documentation to developers, showcasing the evolution of the GDS. After handoff, we consistently supporting developers to clarify confusion and update designs as needed due to technical and timeline constraints.   

Our documentation was crucial in bridging the gap between design and development, ensuring a high-quality end product. 

Here’s how we did it:

Created a consistent standard for documenting new components
Bridged inconsistencies in the transfer of knowledge between Product and Dev leads.
We helped teams synchronize different processes and workflows to create a ‘source of truth’ that helped us create quick solutions while managing technical and timeline constraints.

Quality Assurance and Testing

Collaborative testing with developers during QA sessions, ensuring that each component and feature functioned as intended.

Historical UX Confluence for new onboarding designers and future iterative design and dev initiatives

We produced a single source of knowledge transfer for all UX/UI activities in Mobile App Rewrite.

Every designer who onboards for future work will be privy to all past design decisions, usability testing, future UX recommendations, product goals, and planning that has been done for the Universal mobile app.