Problem Solving in the Live Music Industry
Team: I often collaborate with others within the company, but the design process is solely my responsibility
My Role: UX Designer/Researcher/Anything and everything else UX related
The Problem
The live music industry lacks options for artists, fans, and venues when it comes to booking and attending events. The current system is full of middlemen and other obstacles that make it more difficult and costly for these three groups to participate in their respective roles in the live music experience.
The task I was given was to design an app that would provide an ecosystem that would serve as an alternative to the current process of the live music industry. Essentially, it needed to be a way for venues to find artists to perform, artists to book shows, and fans to find shows and purchase tickets. In addition, the app was also meant to connect artists with the various types of freelance professionals who work in the music industry (Filmmakers, Audio Engineers, etc.). Given that this was a Start-Up, all of this had to be done on a shoestring budget.
Landscape Research
The problem we set out to solve had many facets, and the first one we decided to tackle was the event search system. The first step in this process was deep diving into popular event search platforms to see what other solutions existed and what we can learn from them.
One of the common threads I found was inconsistency in the way the user sets parameters for the event search process. These parameters such as time, location, genre, etc. were often split up into multiple pages and accessible through different types of UI elements.
After completing my research I decided my next steps would be to design a wireframe that solved these problems while taking cues on the elements that were successful. My goal for this design was to create a simple but powerful tool for searching for events and purchasing tickets, with a focus on keeping all of the user’s options in one place and providing one clear path for user to follow to get to the point where they have a ticket for the event they want to attend.
Initial Solution and Wireframes
The first iteration of the product had the app split into three different versions for the three user groups (Fans, Artists/Performers, and Venues).
Testing and Revision
By conducting testing with users in our target demographic (young adults in college areas) and consulting with the client, I learned that this design was successful in streamlining the event search and ticket purchase process, but was still to fractured to solve the larger problem that the client wanted solved. I needed to design another iteration of the app that would meet the needs of all three of our user groups at once.
A look at the updated prototype
This Iteration of the app has three sections in the navigation: Search, Inventory, and Account. Within those three tabs, a simple dropdown menu allows the user to view those sections through the lens of our different user types, all in one app. Accent colors are used to show the user which user type they are currently using the app as. The key improvements in this version of the app are the addition of the freelancer user type, and the ability to switch between user types without the need to switch apps or accounts.
Next Steps
While work on the event search is far from over, we decided as a team that we were comfortable leaving it at that iteration temporarily while we worked on bringing other pieces of the puzzle up to speed. The next area we wanted to focus on was the venue owners. In order to make this idea work we need them on board or there are no events for our users to attend. What we needed in order to do this was to learn more about what these venue owners would need and want from a service like ours, and this meant it was time for us to use our connections in the industry to conduct some more research.