UX Research

Interaction Design

Usability Testing

Visual Design

Prototyping

UM Athletics Tickets

A redesign of the University of Michigan Athletics ticket purchasing experience, focused on simplifying navigation, reducing information overload, and streamlining the path to purchase.

    ROLE
    Designer & researcher
  
    TEAM
    Kevin Choi, Adrian Berrigan, Elizabeth Yang

    TIMELINE
    Sept 2022 - Apr 2023

    MGoBlue.com
    is
    the
    primary
    digital
    channel
    for
    Michigan
    Athletics,
    spanning
    29
    varsity
    sports
    and
    over
    $50M
    in
    annual
    revenue
    from
    13
    ticketed
    sports.
    However,
    the
    ticketing
    experience
    was
    complex
    and
    information-heavy,
    making
    it
    difficult
    for
    fans
    to
    quickly
    find
    and
    purchase
    tickets.
  

    The
    goal
    was
    to
    reduce
    information
    overload
    and
    simplify
    the
    path
    from
    landing
    page
    to
    ticket
    purchase,
    creating
    a
    more
    intuitive
    and
    efficient
    purchasing
    experience
    for
    fans.
  

    Working
    alongside
    a
    team
    of
    three
    in
    partnership
    with
    the
    Michigan
    Athletics
    department,
    I
    led
    research
    and
    design
    to
    streamline
    the
    ticket
    discovery
    and
    purchase
    flow,
    improving
    clarity
    and
    reducing
    friction
    across
    key
    decision
    points.
  

[ Problem ]

How might we simplify the ticket purchasing experience on MGoBlue.com to reduce friction and better connect fans with the events they care about?

29
Varsity sports
13
Ticketed sports
$50M
Annual ticket revenue

[ Research ]

Understanding Michigan fans and the competitive ticketing landscape

We analyzed direct, indirect, and analogous competitors to identify design opportunities across six areas: navigation, featured content, user journey, information architecture, filtering, and mobile experience.

Distributed through the athletic department's email list, the survey gathered insights from 1,200 customers on purchasing behaviors, preferences, and pain points with the current experience.

Importance of information on MGoBlue.com

We conducted contextual inquiries with 7 participants selected from survey respondents. The 30-minute sessions surfaced patterns in navigation behavior, feature expectations, and friction points on MGoBlue.com.

"The pages have too much information. It makes me feel distracted and not wanting to engage with it."

"It's hard to find tickets sometimes and the seating tiers are also hard to find so I will just go to Stubhub instead."

"If there weren't so many different links in the navigation, I could probably understand where to find that [specific ticket] better."

Research revealed gaps in the experience creating a complicated and inefficient purchasing experience for fans.

      / 01
      Complicated navigation
      Users struggled to find the right page for purchasing tickets due to unclear labels and overwhelming dropdown menus.
    

      / 02
      Information overload
      Cluttered pages with repeated and unnecessary content slowed down the ticket purchasing process and frustrated users.
    

      / 03
      Poor seat selection and filtering
      Users wanted more comprehensive filters and clearer seat availability — closer to what StubHub offers.
    

      / 04
      Missing key features
      Event saving, advanced sorting, and accessible promotions were absent despite being common on competitor sites.
    

[ ideation ]

Defined personas and mapped the user journey from research insights

Four key themes from research informed four distinct personas, each representing different motivations, frustrations, and levels of technical comfort among Michigan Athletics ticket buyers.

Mapped the emotional experience across four user scenarios

Building on our personas, we created journey maps for each user type to trace the highs and lows of their current experience on MGoBlue.com. This helped us identify the specific moments where friction was highest and prioritize which problems to solve first.

[ interaction Design ]

Designing for the core user problem

Focusing on landing on the homepage to navigating ticket pages and the event schedule, we explored multiple directions for each before landing on the strongest concept for our personas.

[ Visual Design ]

Creating the design system

Before creating high-fidelity prototypes, we developed a design library consisting of components, typography, layout spacing, icons, and color schemes. This allowed us to maintain consistency with the current website and brand identity and across the user flows.

Typography

Headings

Typescale	Size	Weight
H1 Headline	35px	Bold
H2 Headline	30px	Bold
H3 Headline	24px	Bold
H4 Headline	18px	Bold

Body & UI

Typescale	Size	Weight
Drop down text	20px	Normal
Paragraph text	16px	Normal
Button text	16px	Bold

Michigan Athletics

Color

Copied

Main

#1B3A6B

Click to copy

Copied

Secondary

#FFCB05

Click to copy

Copied

Hover

#00B2E3

Click to copy

Copied

Paragraph

#181924

Click to copy

Copied

Grey

#828282

Click to copy

Spacing

Left & right margins 48px

Header 48px

Section label to title 16px

Section to section 40px

Icon to label 20px

H3 to card 24px

Cards 32px

Iconography

[ Usability Testing ]

A/B tested with 7 participants, focusing on information hierarchy, filters, and iconography.

38%

faster to find tickets in Version B with a 100% task completion rate

66%

of Version A users disliked the event schedule hierarchy

100%

of users preferred the ticket hover dropdown in Version B

[ Final design ]

Here's what changed

/ 01

Simplified navigation

Tickets were buried in overwhelming dropdown menus. We prioritized tickets in the main nav, condensed dropdowns into two columns with quick-link buttons, and separated login, schedule, and search into a secondary bar.

Before

After

/ 02

Reorganized sport pages

Users found the sport-specific pages overwhelming, with disorganized and repeated information. To streamline the pages and highlight key details, we implemented a card-based layout for ticket options and removed redundant elements.

Before

After

/ 03

Enhanced filtering

Limited filters made it hard to find specific events. To ease the process of finding and comparing events, we installed clear filtering options for sports, location, and time.

Before

After

Final experience

Takeaways

      Stakeholders know their users
      Partnering directly with Michigan Athletics shaped every research decision. Their knowledge of the fan base helped us ask better questions and build something tailored to their audience.
    
      Information hierarchy and organization is key
      The biggest usability gains came from small structural changes like repositioning the ticket schedule link and simplifying dropdown labels. The content was never the problem. The organization was.
    
      A/B testing what you can't predict
      We had assumptions about which version would win. Testing changed those assumptions on nearly every metric. Running it earlier would have saved iteration cycles.
    
      We delivered a foundation, not a spec
      The prototype is a validated direction, not a defined blueprint. The core architecture and layout principles were tested and those should be preserved even as implementation details evolve.

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