AT&T Performing Arts Center
Bringing culture, the arts, and education to the Dallas community.
Project overview, 1 min*
My role
I was the Lead Designer across all phases of the project. I partnered closely with the Creative Director to define and evolve the brand direction, and collaborated with developers, product managers to ensure designs were buildable and accessible.
Overview
We helped AT&T Performing Arts Center reimagine their website and visual identity to better reflect the energy of live performance and improve ticket sales. The result, a user-first digital experience that’s just as exciting and effortless as show night.
Key Outcomes
✅ 38% faster path to ticket purchase
📱 20% engagement on mobile
🎟️ Improved event discoverability and conversion
The Challenge
Disconnected Brand, Dated UX
The Center’s existing website was difficult to navigate, especially on mobile. Users struggled to find events, understand parking options, or complete a ticket purchase without confusion. Meanwhile, the brand lacked the boldness and sophistication of the in-person experience.
The Solution at a Glance
A vibrant, expressive homepage that invites exploration and reflects the energy of Dallas' arts scene.
An intuitive ticketing experience designed for clarity and speed. Screens from an early mid-fidelity prototype.
We approached the project with the mindset of looking past the immediate issues to imagine a better, more seamless experience for users.
Process
Brand redesign
Responsive platform
We conducted a thorough review of the existing website, analyzing user behavior, gathering insights from surveys, heatmaps, and internal interviews, to identify key pain points and opportunities for improvement.
We conducted interviews with both longtime patrons and first-time visitors to identify common frustrations and unmet needs.
The biggest pain points:
• Navigating a complex site structure
• Buying tickets on mobile
• Lack of emotional connection with the brand
We overhauled the site map and page hierarchy,
Prioritizing:
• Upcoming performances
• Easy ticket access
• Parking, dining, and accessibility info
We extended their new brand identity into a modular design system that could flex across marketing campaigns, show assets, and partner promotions, balancing elegance with creative vibrancy.
Worked closely with the in-house development team to ensure a seamless handoff, providing interactive prototypes, accessibility guidelines, and annotated documentation.
Project Scope
We focused on improving the checkout ticketing experience, making event discovery easier, and creating a fresh new brand identity. We worked on a clean design, simple navigation, and a smooth event calendar to make everything more user-friendly. It was a really collaborative process with the team, and below illustrates the whole journey from start to finish.
Timeline
• 5 months of design, review, collaboration, testing.
• 2 months of development
Team
• Product Lead x1
• UX/Product Designer - Marisa Garcia (Me)
• Front-end Developers x2
• Back-end Developer x1
• Data Analyst x1
Discovery + UX Audit
• Reviewed the website and analyzed user behavior.
• Gathered insights from surveys, heatmaps, and interviews.
•Identified key pain points and improvement opportunities.
Understanding the Audience
The biggest pain points:
• Navigating a complex site structure
• Buying tickets on mobile
• Lack of emotional connection with the brand
Strategy & Information Architecture
We overhauled the pre-existing site structure & prioritized:
• Upcoming performances
• Easy ticket access
• Parking, dining, and accessibility info
Brand Evolution & Visual Language
• Created a modular design system extending the new brand identity.
• Built flexibility for campaigns, show assets, and partner promotions.
• Balanced elegance with creative vibrancy.
Design System
• Created a scalable design library for consistency and growth.
• Met WCAG accessibility standards across components.
• Designed mobile-friendly touch targets for better usability.
Collaboration & Handoff
• Partnered with developers for a seamless handoff.
• Shared interactive prototypes and accessibility guidelines.
• Delivered annotated documentation for clarity.
Want the full story?
Read on for complete project, 5 min.*
Setting the Stage
Imagine you're excited to attend a live performance at one of Dallas's premier venues. You visit the AT&T Performing Arts Center's website to purchase tickets, but instead of a smooth experience, you're met with confusion: inconsistent layouts, unclear navigation, and a checkout process that varies depending on the venue. This was the reality for many users, and it was our challenge to solve.
Discovery & Research
Where We Started
We began by taking a good, hard look at the current site. That meant digging into surveys, Google Analytics, and sitting down with stakeholders to hear their side.
One thing was clear: people were excited about the shows, but they weren’t making it to checkout.
“I was just trying to see what seats were available, but I gave up halfway.”
— Survey respondent
We dug deeper and saw that visitors often stalled on event detail pages. Confusing layouts, weak calls-to-action, and unclear ticketing tiers led to hesitation. Working closely with developers and our content strategist, we restructured event detail pages.
• Broke content into digestible chunks with progressive disclosure
• Switched to clear CTAs like “Get Tickets”
• Added real-time seat maps and price previews
The goal? Help users keep moving without second-guessing or backtracking.
The Challenge
The Center’s website is more than just a schedule of events it’s how the community discovers performances, purchases tickets, and connects with the arts. But the experience wasn’t living up to the Center’s mission and the website was underperforming. We heard a common story from both users and internal teams, people were excited about shows, but frustrated by the website.
Here were the big issues
• Checkout flows were confusing and varied wildly depending on the venue.
• Users didn’t realize that all four venues were part of the same organization.
• The ticketing experience felt inconsistent and clunky especially on mobile.
• It wasn’t clear what the Center stood for as a nonprofit.
A few eye-opening data points
Low Conversion Rates Only 50% of site visitors completed a purchase.
High Cart Abandonment 40% of users abandoned their carts.
Mobile Struggles Only 30% of mobile users completed checkout.
Lengthy Purchase Process It took an average of 12 minutes to complete a purchase.
We knew the experience needed to be faster, clearer, and more inclusive, something that reflected the Center’s spirit, not just its schedule.
To make sure we were solving the right problems, we created personas based on interviews and data. These weren’t just boxes to check, they kept us focused on real people, with real needs.
These folks helped shape our design decisions every step of the way—reminding us that we weren’t just improving a website, we were supporting a whole community.
Juan & Diana
Weekend explorers, art lovers, full-experience seekers
• Either a couple or young family.
• Lives in the suburban Dallas area.
• Art lover and will journey into downtown on the weekends.
• Latinx or non-english speaking.
• Single ticket buyer and full experience driven.
"Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a show is family-friendly or if there’s parking nearby. And not everything is clear in Spanish, so we have to double check everything before buying."
"To us, it’s not just the show, it’s the whole experience. We want to plan ahead, make sure it’s worth the trip, and feel like it’s welcoming for everyone, including our kids."
David & Carol
Loyal patrons, active in the arts scene, generous supporters
• Retired couple who are engaged with city events and have a large corporate network.
• Lives within Dallas city limits.
• Enthusiastic broadway fan.
• Consistent donor.
• Subscribes to mailing lists to stay informed.
“We love feeling like we’re part of something bigger, that our support actually helps the arts thrive in the city.”
“We get a lot of emails, but it’s not always clear when a new show goes on sale, or what perks we can use. Sometimes we miss out on tickets we really wanted.”
A “How Might We” Moment & Our Goals
Once we had a solid understanding of the challenges, we shifted gears to brainstorming. We ran a “How Might We” workshop with the client and internal teams to turn our insights into opportunities.
Some of the ideas we explored were:
The HMW's helped us think beyond the immediate issues and imagine a better experience. Then, we picked the key areas to focus on. With the client and our internal teams,
We landed on four main goals
1. Create a unified brand and website across all four venues
2. Simplify the event discovery and checkout journey especially on mobile
3. Make the nonprofit mission more visible and meaningful
4. Improve accessibility and performance across the entire experience
We aimed to
Raise conversion to 20%
Cut cart abandonment by 15%
Increase mobile checkout completion by 50%
Bring purchase time down to under 5 minutes
By aligning our insights with these goals, we had a clear roadmap for what needed to be done, and we were ready to start designing solutions that would help make the user experience faster, clearer, and more inclusive.
With a clearer vision, we tackled the site’s structure.
Our goal: reduce cognitive load and make discovery feel intuitive.
Key changes included
• Unifying all four venues under one site hierarchy
• Adding intuitive filters (genre, date, venue)
• Creating a “First-Time Visitors” section for newcomers
We also gave the nonprofit story a dedicated home on the site. Helping users connect to the bigger mission behind their ticket.
“Now I don’t have to guess where the show is or click around for 10 minutes. It’s just there.” — User test participant
Visual Design & Brand Refresh
I worked closely with our Creative Director to explore and refine the new visual identity. We wanted to show off the energy of live performance without overwhelming the content
Visual decisions we made
• High-legibility modern typefaces
• Jewel-tone colors inspired by stage lighting
• Warm, inviting language to replace formal copy
We regularly asked ourselves,
“Does this feel like an arts center for everyone or just for a certain crowd?”
That inclusivity guided every content and visual decision.
Design system & dev collaboration
We worked as a team to define core Tailwind patterns early on so development could move quickly and predictably.
We designed reusable components in Figma for
Navigation
Event cards
Seat map loaders
Alerts and modals
Filter drawers
I collaborated closely with frontend developers, making sure our components translated smoothly from design to code. Together, we built out the design system to be scalable, WCAG-compliant, and responsive across breakpoints.
“These components saved us so much dev time. I didn’t have to guess what anything should look like.”
— Travis, Front end developer
Designing for Mobile, a huge percentage of users were buying tickets on the go, we paid extra attention to mobile flows.
Some specific changes we made
• Enlarged tap targets and simplified CTAs
• Reduced form fields on checkout
• Added “quick view” event cards for fast browsing
• Supported one-tap payments and guest checkout
Iteration & dream team collaboration
We prioritized key flows like homepage > event page > checkout—for early prototyping and testing. Through internal reviews and user testing using Lyssna, we continuously iterated and validated,
• Functionality
• Accessibility compliance
• Technical feasibility
This iterative, collaborative process helped us deliver a product that felt seamless end-to-end.
An internal design review with the project manager and developers. Going over interactive functionality, layout, design patterns, any additional items to include. These larger, more robust pages that are considered priority in the website goes through this very in-depth iteration. Spending time on developing these more complex pages first really lends to being able to mock-up other supporting pages like About, Contact at a faster pace.
Overcoming Development Challenges
One challenge we ran into was that the seat map took a long time to load for certain venues, which could confuse users. The API response times varied depending on the venue’s setup, making it hard to create a consistent experience. We worked with developers to add clear loading states and fallback messages so users always knew what was happening.
UX Solutions
We brought it all together with
• A unified site map and venue navigation
• Simplified browsing and filtering
• Clear progress indicators and guest checkout
• Real-time seat maps
• Improved mobile CTA placement and filtering
• A scalable component library for devs
• Nonprofit messaging with emotional clarity
Everything worked together to reduce friction and build connection not just for one visit, but for many. We streamlined the entire experience, from how events were browsed and filtered to how tickets were selected and purchased. Whether it was guest checkout, real-time seat maps, or clearer progress indicators, everything was designed to reduce friction and make ticket buying intuitive and fast. But just making it easy to buy a ticket once wasn’t enough.
The 'You may like' personalized events scored high on impact, but the amount of effort it required may have rushed us into launching without testing, which is a best practice the team was unwilling to compromise.
From One-Time Ticket Buyers to Lifelong Patrons
From early stakeholder conversations and survey insights, it was clear that the Center wasn't just a one-time destination, it was a vibrant cultural home. That meant our design needed to support long-term engagement, not just one-time transactions.
As we moved deeper into the project, we started thinking beyond the first ticket sale. What would it take to turn a one-time visitor into a lifelong fan? Using insights from our personas, we developed specific HMW's to address this.
The ideas that came out of that session helped guide some of our biggest design decisions.
HMW Inspire people feel to more connected after their first visit?
HMW encourage first-time guests to become repeat attendees?
HMW make discovering new shows feel exciting and personal?
Idea
We made newsletter opt-ins easier to find, not just at checkout, but across the site, giving us an easy way to stay connected with new visitors.
Idea
We created a “Know Before You Go” section to help folks plan their visit with confidence, especially helpful for those unfamiliar with the venues or the area.
Idea
Highlight new and upcoming shows with dynamic visuals and easy ways to save and share favorites.
One stakeholder told us:
“We’ve always wanted the website to feel like an extension of what it’s like to be in the space, welcoming, informative, and inspiring. This finally feels like that.”
By thinking about retention during the design phase, not as an afterthought, we helped ensure that users weren’t just buying tickets, but building a relationship with the Center.
Outcomes & Results
The impact of the redesign was clear within a few months of launch
When we cut down the steps to buy tickets and made the site smoother especially on mobile more people found shows they liked and actually followed through. It wasn’t just faster, it felt better to use, and that showed up in the numbers.
Reflections & Learnings
• Early collaboration made everything smoother.
• Data doesn’t lie. Behavior flow in GA helped us see exactly where users were struggling.
• Don’t underestimate clarity. Some of the best changes were just clearer buttons, simpler language, and better layouts.
• Designing for mobile isn’t an afterthought. It should lead the experience, not follow it.
What'd I do differently
• While we made strides in improving the overall experience for the AT&T Performing Arts Center, we did not include a bilingual option. An important miss given the specific Spanish-speaking audiences we aimed to better serve, and I hope this is revisited in the future as the project evolves.
• If I could do this project over, I’d start with mobile-first wireframes right out of the gate instead of retrofitting them later.
• I’d carve out more time for testing prototypes with actual users before jumping into high-fidelity designs. It would’ve helped us catch a few usability snags earlier.
Final Takeaway
We didn’t just build a more usable website, we created an experience that celebrates the arts and the people who support them.
This project reminded me that great UX is about removing friction, building trust, and meeting people where they are.
“It finally feels like the arts center wants me there.” — Post-launch user feedback