Cinigo
Improving movie planning efficiency by 36% for Deloitte Digital
Group cinema planning is broken. Everyone's been in that group chat - 'What do you want to watch?' 'Doesn't matter.' Forty-five minutes later, nobody has booked anything. We redesigned it from scratch.
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The Context
It has eight cinemas spread across the region, over 73,000 university students, and a young population that goes to the cinema socially, in groups. Yet the end-to-end experience of planning that group outing had never been designed for.
No unified platform. No coordination tools. No way to compare cinemas, split costs, or agree on seats without it becoming one person's problem. The fragmentation was total, and everyone had just accepted it as normal. Deloitte Digital commissioned us to examine that experience and find a better way.
The Brief
The brief wasn't just to build a cinema app. It was to identify why group cinema planning consistently breaks down, and design a system that fixes it at the root, not the surface.
PROCESS
01 - Discover
Secondary research first -
We studied three platforms that had already solved parts of this problem: BookMyShow (India) for its three-step booking flow, Maoyan (China) for trending-first discovery, and Flicks (UK/NZ) for true cinema aggregation. Then we audited Birmingham's existing cinema websites. The failures were consistent: hidden pricing, no group features, and accessibility were nearly universally ignored.
Primary research -
Semi-structured interviews and re-enactment sessions with five cinema-goers (ages 22–30, all postgraduate students in Birmingham). The re-enactment method was critical: participants walked through their actual booking process thinking aloud, so we could see exactly where friction lived - not just hear about it.
Cinema Eco-system Mapping-
Opportunity Areas -
Research Framework Table -
02 - Define
Every feature had to earn its place by solving a specific problem one of them actually had. No feature made it through without a direct line back to an insight.
What the priority matrix actually decided -
HMW simplify group bookings so ticket-splitting and seat coordination don't fall on one person?
HMW unify Birmingham's fragmented cinema landscape into a single, trustworthy platform?
HMW integrate multiple review sources so users can make confident decisions?
HMW deliver personalised recommendations that feel helpful, not commercial?
HMW give users ownership over their watchlist and viewing history?
03 -Develop
04 - Deliver
Reflection
