About the case study

Théâtre Déchaînés is a Montreal-based cultural venue dedicated to making the performing arts open and welcoming to all.

As part of our UX design course, we partnered with them to reimagine their ticketing experience from the ground up. This site documents our design process, from discovery and research to prototyping and testing, as we worked to build a billetterie that any user, regardless of ability or device, can navigate independently and with confidence.

Project Overview

This project explores how to design a more accessible online ticketing experience for Théâtre Déchaînés.

The design challenge is framed by the organization’s day-to-day need to run its programming and communications through its own website, where people should be able to discover artists, read updates through an infoletter, and complete key transactions like submitting support tickets and buying tickets online (billeterie).

Right now, the site is not accessible enough, which means they need a full redesign focused on web accessibility and eco-responsible web practices, backed by research. They have internal support (an intern specialist and an accessibility intern) and will also be accompanied by people such as Marie Ayotte, but the current limitations are affecting real opportunities because they cannot reliably sell tickets online, they are restricted in collaborating with bigger theatres, even though they are already working in that ecosystem.

Research Insights

How might we design a ticketing system that enables independent ticket purchasing for diverse users while respecting the client’s need for clean, lightweight, and maintainable technology by improving accessibility, participation, and inclusion without increasing system complexity?

When researching accessibility standards, we discovered that an inclusive ticketing experience must follow the four core principles of WCAG — Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. These principles became the foundation of every design decision we made throughout the project. Rather than treating accessibility as a checklist, we used these four pillars to evaluate our designs at every stage from how information is structured, to how users navigate, to how the system communicates errors and next steps.

Result

After months of research, iteration, and collaboration with Théâtre Déchaînés, we arrived at a ticketing experience designed from the ground up with accessibility and simplicity at its core. Our final prototypes reflect everything we uncovered — a clean, semantic, and lightweight system that empowers every user to independently browse, select, and purchase tickets, regardless of their ability or device.