Until now there hasn't been an elegant and simple way of creating and managing reserved seating events in a self service fashion. Reserved seating events allow event organizers to optimize revenue with tiered ticket pricing whilst providing attendees with a better event experience through selecting their own seat at the time of purchase. Reserved seating solutions until now were expensive, hard to use, visually uninspired and simply out of reach for many event organizers. Eventbrite now offers a product that is free to use (if the event is free) or charges a small fee when tickets are sold to paid events. Reserved seating was traditionally in the realms of the industry giants and other fee for service companies. The team at Eventbrite set out to create a browser based, on brand, visually inspired design tool that enables seat map creation in a self service fashion. The project faced many challenges not only from a solution design perspective, great care had to be given to ensuring it was as simple to use as possible for millions of potential users. Our target audience is massive, our reserved seating platform can be used by event organizers hosting a multitude of event types of all different sizes. Technically the project was very challenging and pushes the boundaries of javascript and vector graphics browser based applications and is very forward focused.

Our intent was to create a disruptive element within the reserved seating event space, where there is a distinct lack of options for event organizers who have a need for reserved seating like features. Creating a solution based on a self service model enables us to target a large base of organizers who aren’t currently being serviced as well as lure organizers using other providers by offering a more flexible, self service, lower cost and simple to use product. From a design and user experience perspective our goal was to make the software an extension of the Eventbrite brand and embody aspects of our visual and voice identities. This meant it had to be simple and fun to use, bright and engaging, supportive and nurturing.