Fans First
Designing trust into an NHL ticket resale marketplace
Role
Product Designer
Scope
UX Research, Product Design, Testing
Timeline
2022
Team
Art Direction
Context
FansFirst is an NHL ticket resale marketplace built for two sides of the transaction: buyers looking for seats with confidence, and sellers looking for a simple way to list and manage tickets.
Challenge & discovery
Designing an NHL ticket resale marketplace meant solving more than a transactional flow. In resale, users are also evaluating uncertainty: whether the platform is legitimate, whether the tickets are real, and whether the process feels safe enough to complete.
To understand the category, I analyzed competing ticket resale platforms and mapped the common patterns across browsing, seat selection, checkout, and listing management. This helped establish user expectations, but also revealed a recurring weakness: many experiences were functionally complete, yet still felt opaque or hard to trust.
I then tested early mockups and gathered user feedback on both buyer and seller flows. Across interviews and design feedback sessions, one theme kept repeating: trust mattered as much as usability. Users wanted a marketplace that not only worked, but also felt credible, transparent, and dependable throughout the journey.
That insight reframed the project. The core challenge was not just to make ticket resale easy to use, but to design an experience that reduced doubt at every step. Trust became the central product principle guiding the work.
UI KIT / DESIGN SYSTEM
To support a marketplace focused on trust and clarity, I created a design system that established a consistent visual language across the product.
The system defined core foundations such as typography, color, spacing, and reusable components, enabling a scalable approach across key flows like ticket discovery, checkout, and listing management.
Each decision was made to reduce friction and improve clarity, helping users feel confident throughout the experience.
