Project
A case study for a mobile app to help musicians [early in their career] find gigs (and more)
Date: December, 2015
Role: User Experience Designer
Skills: Sketching, User Research, User Flow, Wireframing, Interactive Design, Visual Design, Prototyping
Tools: Sketch, Invision, Axure RP, Keynote
The basic idea of the GigZ App is to help musicians [who are early in their music career or starting out] find gigs and venues to perform, as well as provide a rating system to evaluate the venues and artists, which, to some extent, eliminates the middle man – the booking agent. Think of it as a Yelp meets Uber for musicians and venue owners.
While I did a lot of work for this project, a majority of the work concentrated on Discovery and User Research.
As I got more and more into the project I realized I could add previously unplanned features that are not offered in other applications. The realization of these concepts would bring a unique value proposition to venue owners and redefine work done by booking agents as well.
The work shown here was done for an MVP, a simple offering of features for the musician only; this is where it all started.
Discovery
Market Research:
Research was performed in regard to studying the targeted user market (musicians). This data along with the user research performed helped build a story which formed the basis for the idea of the application.
Competitive Analysis
Some of these sites reviewed offer full-blown solutions for the musician that includes some of the features I was designing for the GigZ app, but lacking some critical features the GigZ application could address. Others do not cater to musicians but offer similar features.
Field Research & User Interviews
Field research was done at various open-mikes as well as finding musicians online via Facebook. These interviews were recorded and valuable information was obtained to help define the persona. This effort helped me understand more about the kind of musicians the application should target, which was mostly musicians earlier in their career or those doing music on the side, versus the more serious full-time and established musicians. However, research showed that some of the more established musicians would also benefit from some of the features that eventually became part of the application.
Card Sorting and Affinity Mapping – getting the features right
Workshops were held to identify what was important for the user. Other workshops included card sorting for identifying features for the application. This was conducted with a group of designers, product owner, and programmers.
The Design
Colors and UI Patterns
Lato Font