Exploring the customer journey of a movie goer

Lucie Paterson
ACMI LABS
Published in
4 min readMar 23, 2016

--

Last night I saw The Daughter at Cinema Nova with a group of friends. Warning: this post contains potential spoilers.

Turns out now that I work at ACMI I can’t help but do some ‘lite’ user research on social occasions. Below are my thoughts about the customer journey and some ideas about what could improve the experience.

Before I arrived

I purchased my ticket through the Nova website and was pushed into using PayPal. This was simple and quick to use but I couldn’t help but think there was something more they could be doing so that it’s the start of my film experience with them. While PayPal is efficient, it’s also unfriendly. Perhaps something more experience related could come with or after the confirmation email, like critique of the film so far, what else I could do on my visit, an offer for the bar. That would leave me very happy.

On the way

I have my phone with me at all times which as we all know is sometimes a hinderance, but when you’re in the entertainment business this is a great opportunity to get people engaged and consuming your stuff at any time of convenience. On the tram I would have been interested in how busy the cinema was — would it pay to get there earlier to get my goods and choose a seat, the most recent and trending news/reviews related to the film and what’s coming up at Nova would also be cool so I could get in the zone and possibly consider what I might book next.

After the film

I went with two friends and afterwards we discussed the film, particularly the characters (which were strong, who infuriated us etc) and the ending (!) I asked them at this stage what they could want to receive from Nova to continue understanding and experiencing the film and also from a customer experience perspective what would be nice. Here’s what came up in order of priority (done like a true product manager!):

  • It always looked so cold so where in Australia was it was filmed — Tasmania? Perhaps a map identifying the areas filmed with some behind-the-scenes photos would be good.
  • You’re left hanging at the end as to whether Hedvig (Odessa Young) dies or doesn’t. Between the three of us we had different opinions and thought it was a weak decision to not just kill her off. It would be interesting to poll the audience to hear what everyone thought happened and then with the results get information from Ibsen’s play (which the film is based on) about the ending and hear from the director, critics and other viewers with what they thought happens.
  • In terms of future reading and viewing we were interested in what other Ibsen plays have inspired films and in general it’s an opportunity to get people engaged with the Norwegian playwright who might not normally find his work accessible. Nova could refer to previous films they’ve screened that fit this and what’s coming up that you might like.
  • Given it’s director Simon Stone’s first film it would be really interesting to hear from him about what inspired him to take on this film and about his experience from go to woe. Also, what’s next for him? Can we ‘track’ or ‘follow’ him like you can artists on Songkick.
  • As with the above the film has an incredible cast so it would be cool to track the actors and get alerted to related news/reviews and when a film featuring them is coming to Nova (or another cinema near you).

At work yesterday sebchan introduced me to Letterboxd. As soon as I got home from the film I got it from the app store and was so impressed with the onboarding. Before I created an account it quite naturally introduced me to all the things I could use the app for and in a very user focused way rather than a sales driven way. I then easily created an account and got to work rating films I had seen recently and adding some to my watch list. Up until now my ‘watchlist’ has been in Todoist so this is a major improvement.

I gave the The Daughter a star rating and could also review it and share it with my followers (if I had any), start a list of films. There’s definitely potential here for Nova (and ACMI) to learn from the social experience you get with Letterboxd. There’s a lot of content relevant to our programs that we have in the collection and online as blog posts, video so our challenge is to curate this in a way that is helpful and interesting for the user and serve it up appropriately (length, format etc) and distribute it to you on the right platform be that email, an app we create or through an existing app like Letterboxd. So watch this space as we investigate and do some trials.

We’d love to hear from you. What else would enrich your cinema-going experience?

We’ve also done work on journey mapping at ACMI looking at how visitors interact with the space and making improvements. It’s an interesting read!

--

--