“Keeping teenagers invested”
for Pass Culture

Logo title

ROLE

Product Designer

TIMELINE

2 weeks (2022)

TOOLS

Figma, Notion, Google Suite

SCOPE

Problem
Solution

ABOUT PASS CULTURE

Pass Culture is a French Government initiative to encourage teenagers to strengthen and diversify their consumption of culture.

Here's how it works:

From the age of 15 to 18, each teenager receives credits on their birthday that they can purchase cultural products through the Pass Culture app (movies, books, museum tickets, concerts, art supplies, etc).

Spotify project
Spotify project

MY ROLE

I was involved in all steps of the project, with a focus on UX writing & coordinating the team toward our goal

OUR CHALLENGE

As a team of three, we had to tackle the following design problem given by Thomas Dugué (CPO) and Tristan Martin Stocker (product manager) at Pass Culture:

“How can we keep the teenagers from leaving the app when they are low on credits?”

Hi! We have a mission for you

Why this design problem?

Pass Culture noticed that while the app is widely used by teenagers, the app retention decreases drastically when teenagers dip below 5€ on their cultural pass.

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1. USER RESEARCH

Being in our thirties, we had to learn about the target audience as we know nothing about teenagers

In order to understand teenagers and understand the real issues users are facing on Pass Culture, we decided to meet them directly. But before that, we had to set some goals and prepare the interviews (which questions? where to go?).

We wanted to know...

How is Pass Culture perceived?

How do they consume culture?

What's their relationship with money?

How do they use mobile app?

Method

📝 Guerilla interviews 🧑‍💻 On site 🎤 1 interviewer / 2 secretaries ⏱️ 10 min

Panel

👥 7 people
  • 5 women / 2 men
  • 15 to 18
  • Paris 12e - in a cultural centre (near a park, a movie theatre and a major retail store), where young people like to unwind
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What did we learn?

4/7 participants agreed on

  • Free offers aren't visible enough

  • They are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content in Pass Culture

  • There are no notifications so they forget the app

Oh! But I didn't know there are free offers?!

Elisa

4/7 participants agreed on

  • They don't spend their pocket change on culture

  • When low on credits, they don't spend the remaining credits

I use my pocket money to hang out with my friends.

Amélie

7/7 participants agreed on

  • Community is a huge enabler of discovery

  • Parents and school are important, but only because they are decision-makers

A friend recommended a movie to me, so I went to see it.

Noam

5/7 participants agreed on

  • They like highly customised content (which currently is not available on Pass Culture)

  • They use mobile apps to stay connected to their friends

I would like to receive suggestions based on my history.

Yliess

Redefining the problem

Using our newfound knowledge, we can focus our efforts onto the real challenge:

“How can we better support teenagers in consuming culture that resonates with them?”

2. IDEATION

Generating many ideas and sorting them, in order to find the best solution for all

After drawing a mind-map with our problem statement as its center, the following 3 keywords drove our focus in finding a solution:

Customisation

  • Making a bespoke experience

  • Highlighting offers the user might like

Discovery

  • Raising awareness of free offers

  • Simplifying access to content to avoid cognitive load

Community

  • Making it easier to share passions and activities with friends

  • Bringing more interactions around the app

Many ideas went through our minds during brainstorming (Crazy 8, Storyboarding). We couldn't keep them all and had to focus on what's most important: making Pass Culture relevant even without credits.

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❌ Geolocation

This feature would be expensive to implement and it wouldn't be useful everywhere as small towns have a low density of cultural events.

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❌ Event planner

Organizing activities with friends through Pass Culture would be a nice feature, however there's currently no way to add friends within the app.

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❌ Gamification

Motivating teenagers through gamification may seem great on paper, but further time-consuming research would be required to ensure its relevancy, and above all, its feasibility.

We can revisit some of these ideas later once the foundations are in place.
Currently, teenagers are leaving the app because the content doesn't seem relevant to them.
This led us to rethink other core features...

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✅ New onboarding flow

To be able to customise the user's experience, we needed a way to gather data from the user. Improving the onboarding experience could help understand the user's interests.

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✅ A customised feed to discover

A unique feed would simplify the navigation, filter recommendations and help the user focus on a limited selection closer to their preferences.

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✅ A way to add friends

To unlock possibilities and make the app feel more organic, we had to think of a way to interact with friends inside the app while respecting the user's privacy (GDPR).

3. PROTOTYPING V1

Giving birth to our solution, making it tangible

For this project, we were given access to the Pass Culture UI kit. Being constrained with the iPhone 8 ratio, we had to make full usage of the space available.

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Weekly notification

  • Rekindle the attention of the user through notifications pop up.

  • Once per week seems to be a good frequency, just enough to remind the user there's new content but not enough to annoy them.

New onboarding to gather data

  • In order to suggest customised content related to the user's interests, we added a new onboarding with few short questions and a reassuring tone of voice. In order to suggest customised content related to the user's interests, we added a new onboarding with few short questions and a reassuring tone of voice.

  • This also introduces the ”adding a friend” feature within the app.

Spotify project
Spotify project

New way to discover content

  • A pop-up appears the first time the new version of the app is launched.
  • A toggle has been added to switch to the ”Discover” mode.

  • We kept the old version available, to avoid disrupting everything at once and to keep curated recommendations.

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A customised TikTok style feed

  • We decided to emulate the TikTok style to be more in tune with the users’ expectations: simplicity.

  • The ”Discover” mode highlights content that are related to the user's preferences.

  • If the user added some friends, this will also display their friends’ favourited content.

Bringing friends to Pass Culture

  • To avoid users searching or adding random people in their friend list, users can add each other through a QR code or by sharing a unique link.

  • This allows more control and privacy. It also encourages them to interact between themselves.

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4. USER TESTING

Putting the prototype into the users’ hands and getting their feedback before moving onto development

With a prototype in our hands, we can test if our hypotheses are correct and find out how the experience can be improved. Lessons can be learned from this reality check.

🎯 Our goals

1

Verify affordance of the whole flow

2

Ensure the tone of voice is appropriate for teenagers

3

Assess the community features and their usage

Method

📝 Guerilla interviews 🧑‍💻 On site 🎤 1 interviewer / 2 secretaries ⏱️ 10 min

Panel

👥 7 people
  • 1 woman / 6 men
  • 15 to 18
  • Paris 12, around middle/high school, after class

Scenario

  • As Antonin, the user has turned on his phone after an update of Pass Culture
  • The user has to share a musical event to a friend within the app
  • With his friend Paul nearby, the user has to add him on his friends list

💡 What did we learn?

Most of the experience was perceived positively:

  • Notifications were an effective reminder.

The notification is enticing. You get the sense that something is happening with Pass Culture.

Joachim

I clicked because of the notification, otherwise I wouldn't go on the app by myself, especially if I don't have any more credits.

Alex

  • Navigation within the ”Discover” mode was well received as they felt less overwhelmed.

It's more interactive. You're not searching in the homepage anymore.

Arthur

It's cool, I feel like I'm on Netflix or TikTok, it makes sense to me.

Simon

It's more engaging like this. It's more eye-catching.

Joachim

  • There was no friction when adding friends.

7/7

Users went to the ”Me & My Friends” menu

6/7

Users understood how to add a friend in-app

I remember from the onboarding!

Laurianne

🛠️ What could we improve?

Negative remarks were quite scattered, with no real pain point sticking out. Here are some noticeable comments:

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Community features not well received

The users weren't exactly excited about adding friends and receiving recommendations from them.
However, they immediately thought of new features related to the events.

🔥 High Priority

I hadn't noticed, but I don't necessarily want my friends to know that I'm a fan of JUL, for example.

Alex

It's not a game changer [...] but it's still nice to know.

Raphaël

That's cool IF you want to go to a concert with a friend.

Simon

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Some information not readable enough

6/7

users didn't see 'x friends added it to their favorites'
on the Discover mode

🔥 High Priority Easy fix

I hadn't noticed, but I would have liked to see the friends' names.

Arthur

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1/7

users confused by the wording on the onboarding

Medium Priority 🔥 High Priority

I had to read the sentence in gray before understanding the real question.

Alex

5. ITERATING ON V2

Due to time constraints, we decided to drop the ”friends” feature as it was a huge can of worms that would have required too much time to properly address. We prioritized what we could easily improve.

Here's the latest iteration of our solution following feedbacks from the users :

6. CONCLUSION

  • Due to lack of time, we decided to stop exploring the Friends feature. A new research phase focused on this topic would be interesting. Especially since the ”adding a friend” functionality already worked as it was.

  • If we eventually decide to implement this solution, we'd have to check if retention actually improves. Rising ”favourite” and ”time spent” metrics would be good indicators of engagement.

It is indeed no small feat to get the attention of teenagers! Working on this project was very challenging as I was out of my comfort zone since I knew nothing of the target audience and teenagers are hard to approach.

However, it was a great experience since it reminded me to be mindful of unconscious bias when taking on the design problem.

”That's ambitious!
Well done for the toggle and the dark mode.”

”You made plenty of highly interesting and accurate points that will allow us to explore new avenues.”

Thomas Dugué

CPO at Pass Culture

Thank you for your attention!

Interested in my other projects?