My Role
Contributions
Tools
Team
Timeline
UX Researcher
Product Designer
User Research
Competitor Analysis
User Persona
Storyboarding
App Design
Prototyping
Lo-fi Usability Testing
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
Project Management
Figma
Miro
Google Slides
Google Docs
Excel
Zoom
Dennis
Miranda
Suchanya
Alice
2 Week Project
Introduction
1. User Interviews
To gain insights into the needs, desires, and pain points of music event attendees when discovering events and purchasing tickets, I conducted 5 user interviews.
Key Takeaways:
Discovery Issues: Users struggle to find concerts and often miss events due to late information.
Need for Personalization: Users want personalized concert recommendations.
Navigation Problems: Ticketing platforms, especially Ticketmaster, are hard to navigate.
Cost Concerns: High ticket costs prevent users from attending concerts.
Fragmented Information: Users struggle with having to go to multiple sources to find information.
Essential Information: Users need clear details on artist lineups and ticket prices.
Social Experience: Users enjoy attending concerts with friends but sometimes have difficulty finding companions.
“I have to go through sooo many sites to find concerts.”
"I love going to concerts with friends, it's fun and makes me feel safe. "
"Costs are the biggest reason I cannot go to concerts."
“I often find out about concerts when it’s too late.”
“I hate using Ticketmaster it’s hard to navigate”
“Sometimes I want to go to concerts but I cannot find people to go with”
““I need to look at artist lineup and cost before buying a ticket”
“I want to get personalized concert recommendations”
What Do People who Attend Music Events Really Want?
Identifying Pain Points and Desires
2. Survey
Why do you tend to donate?
What factors do you consider when determining which live music event to attend?
62.5% of respondents use social media to look for upcoming music events.
68.8% of respondents consider concert costs as one of the biggest roadblocks for attending concerts.
60% of respondents use Ticketmaster when purchasing tickets.
Artist Lineup
74/5%/47 reps
In order to get an even better understanding of our users, we created a survey sent and had 47 respondents.
Location
68.1%/47 reps
Cost
76.6%/47 reps
“Costs are the biggest reason I cannot go to concerts”
"I mainly look at costs and check to see if it's worth going for that price"
““I need to look at artist lineup and cost before buying a ticket”
Key Takeaway:
The top two things people consider are the artist lineup and cost when determining which live music event to attend.
People seem to use Google, Ticketmaster, Instagram, and Spotify to look for upcoming music events.
Design Question:
How might we design a platform that centralizes event discovery, personalizes recommendations, addresses cost concerns, and enhances social coordination for music enthusiasts?
5. Summarize findings
6. Problem statement
7. Reframe the Design Question
8. Hypothesized solution
Wide Event Listings: Offer diverse events, artists, and genres.
Personalized Recommendations: Suggest events based on user preferences.
Custom Filters: Refine searches by date, location, genre, etc.
Ticket Price Tracking: Compare and track prices for the best deals and affordable tickets.
Pricing Transparency: Show clear ticket prices and fees, recommending reliable vendors.
Reminders and Notifications: Alert users about events and sales.
Social Features: Help users see friends’ interests and coordinate plans.
Users struggle with finding music events and often use multiple platforms.
They prioritize artist lineup and cost when choosing events, seek personalized recommendations, and enjoy attending with friends.
Key issues include cost barriers and fragmented information
Music enthusiasts struggle with fragmented information across platforms, high ticket prices, and a lack of personalized recommendations. Coordinating with friends also proves challenging, diminishing the experience. Our app will centralize event discovery, offer tailored recommendations, address cost concerns, and enhance social connectivity in one seamless platform.
The above findings helped us further narrow down our problem statement, so we came up with our final design question:
3. Competitor Analysis
"I mainly look at costs and check to see if it's worth going for that price"
Key Takeaways:
Features to include in Giggate based on competitor analysis:
Wide event listings, reminders, custom filters, bookmarking and notifications, personalized recommendations, direct links and, friending/following and sharing.
Ideas for how our app will Improve on competitors:
Pricing transparency, track ticket prices, better location filters, enhance personalization, enhance bookmarking, and highlight local events as well.
What Are the Strengths and Weaknesses of Popular Music Event and Ticketing Platforms?
4. User Persona
I created a User Persona with common threads that were found between interviews, surveys, and further research.
After considering these findings,
What defines a Typical Music Event Attendee?
Identifying Key Pain Points and Issues in Music Event Discovery and Ticketing, and Hypothesizing Solutions
I created a user flow for the app which was grounded back into Olivia's and our users end goal:
Finding a concert she likes and buying a ticket.
9. User Flow
Mapping the User Flow for the Main Goal:
Finding a Concert and Buying a Ticket
Giggate
Your one-stop shop and companion for discovering music events, with streamlined and reliable ticket purchasing options.
Developing Initial Prototypes to Integrate Hypothesized Solutions
We went ahead and made a paper prototype of the pages.
I was in charge of the pages depicted.
Homepage: Features tiles linking to music events and artist pages.
Music Event Page: Offers event information and ticket purchasing options, including a ticket tracker for price comparison.
Artist Information Page: Lists events and links to related music event pages.
Profile Page: Shows saved collections, followed users, and shared music events and artist pages.
This design enhances event discovery, ticket purchasing, and social interaction.
10. Paper Sketches
11. Lo-fi Prototyping
Option to compare tickets or select the recommended ticket vendor.
Share button to encourage collaboration between network.
Notification button to stay updated about events and artists.
This can link to a music event page where you can buy tickets.
This can also link to an artist information page.
You can find your saved music events from your profile.
You can find your saved music events from your profile.
You can follow other members so you can see what other people like and also to collaborate with them.
Added descriptions so that people know what they can search up.
Profile Page
Artist Info Page
Music Event Page
Homepage
Turning Point and Design Hurdle
STOP
However, I know design is an iterative process.
Determined to improve, I decided to continue with this project on my own and redid the competitive analysis, including Bandsintown, to find ways to enhance GigGate by incorporating useful features or addressing issues.
While showing our progress to a fellow UX designer for feedback, they mentioned that our app resembled another application called Bandsintown.
This surprised me since it hadn't come up during our research, despite conducting five user interviews, analyzing 47 survey responses, and Google searches.
GigGate aimed to be a one-stop shop for discovering music events and buying tickets, eliminating the need for other apps.
Learning that a similar app already existed was disappointing. My teammates even decided to give up and work on a different project.
12. What is Bandsintown?
13. Competitive Analysis: Bandsintown vs Giggate
14. Giggate’s strengths
& enhancements
15. Implementation Plan
GigGate Strengths:
Ticket Price Tracker: Compares prices across vendors, helping budget-conscious users find the best deals.
Verified Vendor Recommendations: Highlights trusted vendors directly on event tiles for secure purchases.
Genre-Based Discovery: Offers personalized event recommendations based on user preferences.
Following and Friending: Follow friends so you can see what your friends are liking and to coordinate
Enhancements:
Save Without Notifications: Add an "interested" button to save events without triggering notifications.
Location-Based Search: Enable searches by user location or radius for more relevant event discovery.
New Feature 1: Save Without Notification
1. Introduce collections, including a default "Likes" collection, where users can save music events and artists.
2. Users can create and share custom collections. A "Like" button will allow users to quickly save events to their "Likes" collection.
New Feature 2: Location-Based Search
Add a filter on the search page that allows users to adjust the search distance and set their preferred location.
Bandsintown is a music platform that notifies users about local concerts and upcoming band tours. It also provides tools for artists to manage and promote their tour schedules.
I analyzed Bandsintown’s ticket purchasing flow, features, user feedback, and visual design to identify gaps and opportunities for GigGate.
Trying Again and again:
More Iterations, Testing, and Problem Solving
16. New Lo-fi prototypes
Now that I am doing the project on my own, I have the ability to edit all of the pages included in the application.
Changes:
1. Event tile and artist tile: add a “add a collections and like button”
2. Search page: add filter and sort feature with location specified
3. Add a collections page and sequence
4. Add a collections section to the profile page
“Like” and “Collection button added
Filter and Sort feature
Collections have been added to the profile section
Music Event Page
Search Page
Collections page
Profile Page
17. Lo-fi Usability testing
18. Hypothesized solution
After creating the lo-fi prototype, I conducted a usability test on 5 people.
They liked my designs but offered key pieces of feedback:
1. There are too many boxes in the homepage
2. Make the artist and event tiles different shapes
3. Add descriptions to the tiles in every page
4. The options to be notified, like, share, and add to collection are too small and hard to understand
Artist tiles are now circular.
There are also descriptions listed below.
Music event tiles are now rectangular.
The notification button is emphasized and there is a add button so people can add the concert or artist they want
They can either press the “Like” button or “Collection button”
Homepage
Music Event Page
Weaving Branding into Design
and Tying Everything Together
Key Questions & Goals
My Role
Overview
Switching between multiple apps to find music events and dealing with existing unreliable and confusing ticketing processes make it challenging for music fans to discover affordable concerts, getting in the way of memorable experiences with friends and family.
This led me to these questions:
How can I integrate features from various music event platforms into one app while adding innovative ideas?
What features could improve the discovery of events and reliability of ticketing processes?
and to define the primary goal of this project:
How can I design an application that integrates features from music event platforms, adds new innovations, and enhances event discovery and ticketing in one app?
1. Led user research and usability testing to identify needs and gather feedback.
2. Conducted competitive analysis to integrate features into a cohesive solution.
3. Overcame a design hurdle by analyzing a missed competitor and enhancing the app's features.
4. Initially designed the homepage, music event, artist, and profile pages; took over the entire project when the team dropped out.
5. Created a branding scheme and integrated it into high-fidelity prototypes.
6. Gathered success metrics and outlined future steps based on usability testing.
The Final Solution:
Screens, Success metrics, and Conclusion
19. UI Design
Logo
Color Palette
Fonts/Iconography
General Layout
Vibrant. Energy. Creative. Curious
The logo embodies GigGate’s identity as your ultimate music discovery and concert companion.
Designed to resemble a friendly character and styled like a boombox, it connects seamlessly with the vibrant world of music events.
Vibrant Energy: Hot pink captures the excitement and energy of music events.
Bold and Modern: Black and white create a sleek backdrop, allowing hot pink to shine.
Memorable Identity: This palette establishes a distinctive and recognizable brand.
Creative Impact: Evokes creativity and fun, appealing to trend-savvy music lovers.
Using the iOS design system, I adopted familiar fonts, icons, and structural guidelines to ensure consistency and ease of use.
Inspired by popular music streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music, the layout is designed for familiarity and user-friendliness, making navigation intuitive and seamless.
22. Usability Test
& Success Metrics
23. Final thoughts
I conducted a usability test with five participants who were asked to complete the following tasks:
1. Search for a concert based on location.
2. Buy a ticket for a music event.
3. Add a music event to a collection.
Results:
80% of users successfully searched for a concert based on location.
100% of users were able to purchase a ticket for a music event.
60% of users were able to add a music event to a collection.
Areas for Improvement:
1. Integrate the option to adjust the location directly within the "location" search box, rather than having users navigate to a separate "Filter" button.
2. Add labels under buttons to clarify their functions for users.
This project taught me how to create an end-to-end product and enhance my design skills.
Throughout the project, I was able to:
1. Conduct user research, usability tests, and competitive analyses
2. Integrate design feedback to create effective solutions.
3. Overcome a design hurdle by analyzing a key competitor and ensuring unique or improved features.
4. Engage in iterative design, refining the concept continuously.
Future Steps:
1. Improve "Ticket Price Tracker" with better data visualizations.
2. Add labels under buttons for clearer actions.
3. Enable location adjustments directly in the "location" search box.
4. Add concert and event reviews.
5. Provide guides on parking and event logistics.
20. Hi-fi Prototyping
