Cinema
Bending Spoons
Challenge
Three product design exercises completed as part of a Bending Spoons application challenge. Two focused on subscription screens, while the cinema task explored an end-to-end booking flow from rapid research to seat selection.
The challenge started with two focused subscription screens before the broader cinema flow.
The first two deliverables were premium subscription screens in different product contexts. I treated them as focused information hierarchy exercises: make the value clear, keep pricing prominent, and preserve renewal and restore purchase information without letting supporting copy overpower the primary action.
An end-to-end flow, from rapid research to seat selection.
The cinema task came next and gave me more room to work through an end-to-end UX flow, so it remains the main case study on this page.
With three days available, I focused the research on the decisions that happen before someone buys a ticket.
I ran a few quick, informal conversations with friends about how they choose a cinema visit. The research was intentionally lightweight and directional rather than representative, but two needs appeared consistently: people want enough information to decide whether a film is worth seeing, and they want the purchase itself to be fast once that decision is made.
That gave the challenge a clearer UX goal: reduce the distance between “What should I watch?” and “I have my seat.”
Give people useful context about a film without forcing them to leave the booking journey.
Connect the chosen film directly to nearby cinemas, times, seats and payment.
The experience is organized around one continuous decision path.
I translated the two research themes into a simple sequence: discover a film, evaluate it, choose a nearby screening, select seats and pay. Each step keeps the context from the previous one so the user does not need to re-enter information or rebuild the booking mentally.
Browse films currently available.
Check the information needed to choose.
Select cinema, time, seats and pay.
Supporting the choice
Film information is treated as part of booking, not as a separate browsing experience.
The home screen prioritizes what is available now, using “New movies” and “Popular movies” as simple entry points. Ratings provide an immediate comparison signal, while the detail view adds duration, genre, age rating, synopsis, director, cast and trailer before the user commits.
The intent was to keep the amount of information useful rather than exhaustive: enough to support a decision, followed by a prominent path into ticket selection.
Nearby screenings
Once the movie is chosen, location becomes a shortcut to the most relevant options.
The screening step surfaces nearby cinemas with distance and available times in the same view. Instead of asking the user to choose a cinema first and only then discover whether the right showtime exists, the interface makes those variables comparable together.
Date and ticket quantity stay visible at the top, while the running total remains present before moving to seat selection.
Seat selection
The final step keeps the booking state visible while asking for one decision: where to sit.
The seat map distinguishes available, booked and selected seats through a compact legend. Movie, date, ticket quantity and cinema remain visible above the map, reducing the risk of losing track of what is being purchased.
The payment action is deliberately placed after seat selection, with the total price repeated in the primary call to action.
The visual design supports the task hierarchy rather than becoming the task.
A dark interface keeps posters and film imagery visually dominant and echoes the low-light cinema context. The warm yellow to orange accent is reserved for selected states and primary actions, creating a consistent path through the booking flow.
Because this was a three-day challenge, I prioritized flow clarity and decision support over building a broader feature set.
The strongest next step would be usability testing with people outside the initial informal research. I would specifically test whether horizontal movie sections are discoverable, whether cinema and showtime comparison is fast enough, how clearly seat states are understood, and how location permission or booking errors affect confidence in the flow.