Bad UX In Live Events

If you only design the happy path, you’ll have a lot of unhappy users.

Over the weekend, I took my son to a monster truck show for his birthday. When I bought the tickets, they told me to install the app and show the QR code at the gate.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well…

My phone has a small crack in the screen, so they had trouble scanning it. No problem, it happens a lot with QR codes; lemme just zoom in…

Except this app doesn’t allow pinch zooming.

Okay, then, rotate the phone?

Nope. No landscape support, either.

The gate agent told me that if it couldn’t scan, I’d have to leave the arena, walk down the block to the box office, show someone (assuming there's anyone there at noon on a Saturday) my ID to get physical tickets, and then come back.

Seriously.

Luckily, after another minute or so, the scanner finally worked. But, still… that was a TON of friction for something so common.

And it all could’ve easily been avoided if the app developers had just:

• Enabled pinch zooming
• Or allowed device rotation
• Or added a confirmation code for the gate agent to enter manually
• Or even just let me print the QR code on my own piece of paper before I left the house

Point being: Not everyone has the best tech. And even if they do, it often fails at the worst possible moment.

Plan for the "what ifs," because they're not just hypotheticals — they're real things that happen to real people all the time.

Give your users a way forward when — not if — the happy path breaks.

At least then you won’t have guys like me yelling at you online.