UX Designer // 3 Week Project

Ven.u is a Chicago-centric concert discovery app available in the App Store. The two founders, passionate live music fans, designed the product for themselves without performing user research or testing. They identified a business opportunity to supply concert attendee data to venues. At the project kickoff, the app collected this data through passive geofenced check-ins. It offered a virtual “shoebox of ticket stubs” to users by saving their concert history.

Ven.u planned to enhance users’ past concerts through potential new features. Their ideas included providing setlists and opening bands, as well as incorporating photos taken by users during the show. Their strategy was to sell venues on the ability of the app to target relevant consumers with promotional offers. Additionally, venues could reward users for frequent concert attendance. Ven.u challenged my team of three to design a solution customized to users’ needs while incentivizing consistent engagement, which would allow them to meet their business goals.

Tackling our first client project, my team met with Ven.u and identified our client’s key assumptions as a starting point. We broke down the users’ concert experience into assumptions related to the app’s current and future states:

We then outlined assumptions about our client’s direction for both users and venues:

We summed up our client’s assumptions into the following initial hypothesis:

Concertgoers need a way to stay up-to-date on their favorite artists and genres, revisit show history with setlists from shows they’ve attended, and receive rewards for frequent attendance.

We evaluated the live music digital landscape by analyzing 24 direct and indirect competitors. This resulted in market patterns related to the concert experience:

During our initial meeting, Ven.u defined potential users as frequent live music attendees of small, local venues aged 18-45. We wanted to see how this compared to the demographics and behaviors of concertgoers across the United States. Concertgoers age 35-54 were the most active, representing 40%, followed by those age 18-34, representing 35%. We targeted this combined age range of 18-54, which made up 75% of all concertgoers. Bandsintown, a concert discovery app, studied behaviors of live music fans:

We hypothesized that the “Plugged-Indie” matched our target user. This group attends an average of 13 shows per year with 94% preferring small, intimate venues. We also examined the social media habits of North American concertgoers and compared them to the social media habits of Plugged-Indies. Looking at ways in which fans from the studies explored and remembered the concert experience gave us a frame of reference for Ven.u’s feature ideas.

We built on our research of concertgoers and their market by conducting ten user interviews. We recruited interviewees of diverse ages, all falling within our target range of 18-54. We also made sure our users were consistent concertgoers with an average attendance of one to two times per month. We asked both exploratory concert experience questions and specific Ven.u feature questions.

All users needed many methods to discover concerts. Users followed artist and venue social media accounts, checked websites, signed up for email newsletters, and consulted with friends. Four interviewees had used Bandsintown before. It was the only aggregate source app, which drew from users’ music and social media accounts to track their favorite artists. In contrast to our client’s assumption, users were indifferent towards concert reflection. Most users shared photos or videos on social media soon after the show. But revisiting them was an infrequent occurrence. Instead, it was popular for users to tell stories face-to-face with family or friends. Only half of users had ever looked up a setlist and only a few still collected ticket stubs.

It was typical for users to frequent the same venues within their closest metro area or areas. Users preferred the intimate experience of small to medium-sized venues. They felt connected to the performance in a way that wasn’t possible in large crowds. For special events or favorites artists, they traveled farther or attended larger venues.

Users enjoyed rewards programs offering cash back or points. It was important to be able to use points for something they already wanted. One interviewee was enthusiastic about his past experience with a venue’s loyalty program. Our client researched that specific venue and mentioned it to us as a possible model.

Ven.u’s business plan relied on check-ins, but users had mixed feelings and habits relating to them. Some checked-in to save memories or share with friends. But others found it annoying, intrusive, or unsafe. We needed to conduct further research on this feature. To better understand the venue perspective, we immersed ourselves in the Chicago live music scene. Our goal was to learn about the dynamics between venue employees, artists, and their fans. We interviewed four industry experts:

• Public relations professional at a small venue
• Booking manager at a small venue
• General manager at a live music tv station
• Local musician for 20 years

Venues’ and artists’ main method for promoting shows is digital marketing. Facebook comes first due to its large audience. Both also use Instagram, Twitter, and email newsletters. While venues will sometimes work with artists to get fans to see their posts, it’s still more dependent on the artist’s following. Venues focus on offering a consistent product.

Some venues have subscription-based membership programs, but those members don’t correspond to their most frequent fans. Instead of purchased benefits, venues wanted benefits that encouraged repeat concertgoers. With artists doing the marketing heavy lifting, we found a disconnect between the promotional attempts of artists and venues. There was potential for Ven.u to help bridge this gap.

During six of our user interviews, we also conducted concept testing with the current state of the app. To prepare the team for potential pain points, we completed a heuristic evaluation.

• Users expected interactivity with the map and artist or venue names.
• All users expected ticket purchasing. Without it, saving shows didn’t make sense.
• “I’m confused by attend being a calendar feature. Are they free shows?” - Tonia

We synthesized the insights from our interviews into a proto-persona, Jeremy, to characterize our target user. We illustrated Jeremy through a combination of an empathy map and a journey map. Jeremy correlated with our hypothesized target user from the Bandsintown study, the Plugged-Indie.

To understand our user’s behavior over time, we mapped Jeremy’s actions and feelings throughout the concert experience:

Jeremy’s stress tempers his excitement in the discovery phase. By relying on various sources for upcoming shows, he struggles to stay informed, so that he can get the experience that he wants. The concert is a hit, but his letdown in the reflection phase after the high from the show presents a missed opportunity by his local venue to capitalize on his enthusiasm and encourage future attendance.

To keep Jeremy and his journey in mind and the team on the same page, we developed design principles to guide our decisions:

Empathizing with Jeremy’s goals, frustrations, and feelings over the timeline of his concert experience led us to define the problem:

Concertgoers that frequent small to medium, local venues receive concert information from a variety of sources including email lists, websites, social media, and word of mouth. Concertgoers need prompt information from a personalized, aggregate source about upcoming concerts by their favorite artists at their preferred venues to ensure that they can experience live music in an intimate setting. Is there an opportunity to incentivize and reward concertgoers for venue loyalty?

To communicate our direction to our client, I wrote three key questions that we needed to answer through iterative prototyping and testing:

From this comparative analysis, we highlighted key takeaways to meet user expectations:

1. Present chronological upcoming shows first with clear ticket purchasing
2. Allow personalization with favorites drawing from music or social accounts
3. Test cumulative versus tiered rewards systems with benefits at sign up

With our questions as a starting point, we ideated a list of features and sketched concepts to test. While exploring how to balance artist and venue preferences on paper, these forms of a venue emphasis were unsuccessful:

• Users didn’t want to find shows by venues. They needed shows by date and artist first.
• Users didn’t want venue descriptions. They needed location and logistical information.
• Users didn’t want to discover venues. As locals, they already had their favorite venues.

We built a prototype in Axure with versions of features for further concept mixed with A/B testing. Through that point, we had tested with six users. After condensing to a cohesive prototype, we conducted usability testing of task flows with an extra five users. All testers were consistent concertgoers and resided in Chicagoland.

During our final client meeting, we presented our findings and handed off our deliverables. The details of our research engrossed our client. I created the site map and highlighted applicable portions of it throughout our slides. This addition helped our clients to follow along with our design changes. They appreciated how it zoomed in to show the location of individual screens within the app.

Even though our direction for differentiation of their MVP contrasted from their initial assumptions, it excited our client. Answering our revisited key questions allowed us to assess the value of our redesigned Ven.u:

These outcomes worked together to meet our client’s business plan. We then advised them with future recommendations. Building on testing, these ideas are the next logical steps to explore.

To further increase flexibility in personalization, users could favorite at more touchpoints. This could include screens providing show details, artist details, and venue details. Also, the news feed’s mixed feedback was not conclusive. Throughout the project, we heard both positive and negative extremes, requiring further testing for validation.

To further attract and incentivize users, Ven.u could gamify the rewards system. To help make it fun, users could earn bonus points for promotional offers, sharing check-ins on social media, or check-in streaks. Other options for redeeming credits could include access to ticket presales, gifting credits to another user, or venues’ food, drinks, or merchandise.

To further target users with notifications, Ven.u could send key artist and venue announcements, nearby favorite artists, or calendar reminders. They should conduct further testing to determine the frequency and content, so they don't annoy users. Separate settings for different types of notifications could increase customization.

As my first client project, it was challenging to differentiate while working in an oversaturated market. Conducting interviews with local industry stakeholders helped us to identify an unmet need targeting specific users. If we had more time, I would have pushed to work towards a more consumable layout for our show listings. We didn’t consider variations and extremes in source content, such as a show not having available images or names too long for the available space. One user referred to the favoriting hearts as “everywhere and overwhelming.” There also could have been more visual consistency between the show listings and saved shows.

I learned the importance of not losing my voice within a team that didn’t mesh well. Due to the dynamics, I spoke up less. In my next client project, eRetirements, I prioritized continuing to advocate for my perspective throughout. A significant addition to my design process was learning to balance user needs with business objectives. To attract new users, we needed to communicate the value proposition during onboarding. Rewards encouraged location services permission and kept users engaged, which would allow Ven.u to meet its business goals. To read more about my design process evolution, check out my previous project, Simple Slice.