BFM #62: Ticketmaster's monopoly

Hey 👋 

Ticketmaster controls more than 70% of the ticketing market.

In short; they’re a monopoly, and are often accused of abusing their power with high fees, for a service that routinely crashes during popular releases.

And after obsessing over their UX for many weeks, I’m convinced that behind the growing ticket sales and returning user base, lies a troubled experience with fundamental problems.

Product changes for May

At Built for Mars, I have a really clear lens for which I identify features and content to add: does this help people discover, digest and take action upon the UX analysis.

And there are a few changes that you’ll see right now:

• 🍪 New content type: UX Bites

• 🧠 Improved UX Tooltips

• 🌍 Changes to discoverability

1. UX Bites

I get it, you don’t always have 20 minutes to sit down and read a full case study. Sometimes you’re just trying to kill a few minutes.

And, that’s a great way to learn about UX—by looking at what’s great, and understanding why that interaction is so impressive.

So, I’ve started curating the best UX interactions, and every few days post them to a new feed called UX Bites.

I’m working on a better way for people to be able to submit their own Bites, but for now, email me any suggestions.

2. Improved tooltips

The UX tooltips are the glue that contextually binds case studies, UX Bites and best design practices.

And now we’re rolling out far richer content, with things like potential impacts to your product, experiences to try (A/B tests), and much more.

For example, check out the Decoy Effect, Cognitive Dissonance and The Labour Illusion.

3. New ways to discover content

There are now 60 published case studies, which is more than most people are willing to scroll through in a list.

So I’ve released a whole bunch of changes, to make content more discoverable.

This includes:

• Collections—grouped case studies, for example, all 22 of the FinTech case studies in one place.

• Dynamic homepage—you’ll see new content blocks, serving fresh content that changes periodically.

That’s it for today.

As always, I would love to get your feedback on any of the above. Just reply to this email and I’ll pick it up.

- Peter✌️