📅 Jan 2023, revised March 2024 | 👩💻 UX designer and researcher | 🛠 Figma, ChatGPT
💼 original product designed for online UX course
Find the right performing musicians in one place.
Having live music at your event enhances its ambiance while providing interactive entertainment that playing recorded tracks can’t.
But when you’re hiring real human beings, there’s several factors to consider beyond how good the music sounds, such as:
Rates and payment methods
Extra special equipment
Their stage presence and personalities
Whether they can and want to engage with the audience or not
Unfortunately, it usually takes too much inconvenient digging to find out all this across Google searches, badly designed and outdated websites, news articles, and social media accounts.
😀 Solution: This app makes it faster to learn important features event organizers need to know most from a musician, enabling a faster, more efficient, informed discovery and booking experience.
Intended user and business impact:
This app will significantly reduce the time spent searching for the right artists, enhance transparency, organize artist communication with in-app messaging, and dramatically improve the user experience and convenience of searching for artists.
The informational transparency makes it more likely an artist aligns with the organizer’s values and intentions, leading to more satisfying in-person experiences that’ll attract and retain the organizer’s intended crowd.
😩 Problem: A local musician’s info is typically scattered across multiple social media profiles and websites, which is inconvenient, time-consuming, disorganized user journey.
The significance and impact of live music
It would be a dream to book Beyoncé to light up your local pizza festival and wow your whole city, but this is probably out of your league (for now 😉). Until then, local, affordable musicians can liven things up!
Why not just play recorded audio? Well, studies show that there are physical and mental health benefits to experiencing live music:
Stimulating oxytocin and dopamine
Gathering with other people in person fosters a sense of social connectedness, especially if the musicians engage with the audience and come from the same community
Facilitating networking and socializing among attendees
The common interest in the music can serve as a conversation starter and icebreaker
Draws publicity to the artist, venue, community, and event
“How might we connect people and businesses with local artists to help them find the right fit to deliver the desired ambiance and audience engagement?
Current pain points in searching for local, affordable musicians online
I began my user research with secondary research through articles, social media, forums, and other studies, including this survey, on the process of booking musicians online.
These were the most common pain points:
Finding artists within budget and price transparency
Responsiveness, or lack thereof
Can’t tell if the artist sounds good live or not
Availability: couldn’t tell if bands were booked or not until you ask
Worries the artist may attract the wrong audience for the event
Artist may unknowingly have a harmful reputation or values
Awareness of the musician and their choice to play at an event is often dependent on the organizer’s social connections
Long onboarding process for most tools similar to ShowStopper, asks too many question user isn’t sure about such as event budget when they’re just looking to browse
😬 Overall, the current general processes to find affordable local musicians does not address the above pain points efficiently due to information being scattered and often out of date with limited social proof.
“The problem is not finding musicians that want to play, the problem is finding musicians that will be a draw enough people to make the event successful at a price the promoter/venue can afford.”
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For this app, business needs largely overlap with user needs. But if the user is hiring a musician on behalf of a business, they may put extra weight on:
Attracting new visitors (for public events)
Increasing revenue
Alignment with organizational values and vibe
Relationship with their source of funding for the musicians, such as investors, sponsors, or donors
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Most events I’ve attended with live music were often community events intended to bolster support for a marginalized community, thus prospective users in such situations would have distinct needs that other users may not have, and vice versa. Unsurprisingly, most users who I surveyed for this project also had only booked musicians for smaller, communal events such as weddings and fundraisers.
This bias can lead to an app that doesn't fully address the needs of a broader range of events, such as corporate functions, or private parties. I did some research on how to mitigate this bias and decided to ensure that I was not limiting my range of events to my personal experiences, which meant empathizing with user journeys that differed from what I was familiar with. I also used ChatGPT to help create unfamiliar personas and user journeys.
👩💻 So what do users and businesses look for in the right musicians? What are their goals?
To better hone in on my design goals, I sought out typical (user and business) needs and concerns through online research and surveying individuals who had previously booked local artists for live events.
🙁
It seemed like most users I surveyed were currently using social media or established industry connection to book artists rather than apps like this, so I unfortunately found little information about the details of current tool usage beyond social media and emails, leading to an unfortunately limited sample.
🎶 Artist sound + image
How the band sounds live — just because their music sounds beautiful doesn’t mean they can perform well!
Confident, engaging, friendly stage presence — or whatever persona the event needs them to be, be it warm or brooding.
Their sound and personality should be appealing to the target audience, not just the event producers
Does the artist's image reflect the company's values and brand message?
🚙 Logistics
Does the venue have size and capacity for the artist's stage setup and equipment needs?
Is the artist available on the event date, and does their tour schedule allow for travel and setup time?
How close is the artist to my event? If the artist isn't local, consider travel expenses and potential logistical issues.
Will the artist have any logistical requirements from us?
💸 Expenses
What’s the event budget?
Is the artist charging by hour? Song? Project?
Are there any fees outside of their usual rates?
Will the artist need any other accommodations?
What happens if the artist has to cancel?
🤔 Other
Would a well-known artist generate more excitement, or would a lesser-known, talented band be more cost-effective?
If the artist has a professional website, social media presence, and good communication skills, it’ll make the researching and hiring process smoother
A more in-depth look at our prospective users
I used the information above to put together user personas and a journey map featuring common but diverse user journeys and needs, taking into account a wide range of events contrasting in theme and cultural background.
The main two user personas I designed the user flows around were:
Professionals coordinating events for organizations such as nonprofits or corporations.
People of any background putting together private events, such as weddings.
Click to expand
🤔 What are our hypothetical competitors like?
What are some other platforms our users above may have tried? I reviewed 10 other musician marketplace platforms to note what features they include, their positives and negatives, as well as to derive inspiration for this app.
Common useful features I found that align with my aforementioned user and business needs are:
✅ # of verified previous bookings
✅ artist location
✅ reviews with 1-5 star ratings on the search results
✅ starting prices + pricing packages
✅ availability check
✅ genres identified with
✅ languages spoken
✅ pricing packages
✅ # of years active
✅ whether they’re a band or just one artist, if band then names of members
🏆 Upon heuristic reviews, the best UX goes to Thumbtack
Unsurprisingly, it’s the most well-known and biggest company above!
As you can see, Thumbtack has a clean yet informative UI with thorough filters.
Not pictured: it has a relatively simple and efficient onboarding journey that seriously contrasted from the other competitors, which asked over 10 questions before letting me view the artists.
🤔 How might we fulfill these user needs and goals with design?
Our user goals:
To know what the artist sounds like live ➡️
To know the artist’s overall branding ➡️
To know how an artist charges ➡️
To know the artist’s behavior when performing ➡️
More consolidated, less scattered info on artist across multiple disparate sources ➡️
A search engine that organizes artists by factors users often look for such as genre and location ➡️
Possible design opportunities:
Sections for artist audio and/or video
Profile should feature multiple photos
A section that lists multiple pricing options
Social proof, like a section for reviews from other users
A detailed profile section that includes years of experience, genre, and more
Search results inspired by Google search results that tag artist rating, genre, and other key highlights
Sample user flow: searching for an artist, then contacting them
While a booking the right artists depends on several factors, for this project I decided to focus on the user journey of identifying the right artist and the initial outreach.
The main challenge was that throughout the design process, I had to figure out how to accommodate the crucial information above without overwhelming the user and causing too much cognitive overload.
Note: Although this app should have a desktop and mobile version, I only created a mobile version since this was made for a mobile design course.
Classifying artists by genre and location
I decided to initially classify the artists by genre to be consistent with the mental model users might have from using Spotify, which also has this information architecture.
I then figured out how I’d display the information users seek out most when booking artists, such as social media, social proof, availability, rates, and bios.
To minimize back-and-forth clicking, I included a feature for users to be able to play samples of the artist’s featured songs directly in the app.
To deliver social proof to users, I included clear sections for reviews and previous bookings.
Search bar
Users can also search for local artists across genres using a similar mental model as a streaming service search.
The UI of the search results was inspired by the UI of Netflix, colorfully describing the selection to quickly convey an artist’s general vibe.
Messaging artists
To minimize the cognitive load of organizing artist emails in the user’s general email inbox, I designed in-app messaging to help the user stay organized. Users still have the option to receive messages in their general email inbox.
Sending a request to connect with the artist
As previously stated, a feature that made the competitors above difficult to use relative to Thumbtack was that they ask the user several questions about what event they’re booking the artist for before allowing the user to view the artist.
This makes it difficult to view the available artists until the event details are set in stone! Some users just want to browse, so I decided to construct a user journey more similar to Thumbtack by asking the user questions after viewing the artist profile, right before outreach.
This benefits the users and the artists by minimizing back-and-forth questioning since key information is already on hand. Artists can make a more informed judgement on which users to accept requests from.
‼️ Wait! How will the users filter the artists?
⬅️ I was inspired by Thumbtack to design a thorough filtering system for users. However, an insight I gained from looking at Thumbtack’s filtering system is that their filters seem associated with the settings and preferences of the musician users, not just event coordinators.
Take the filter “event type” for example: users may want a certain artist at an elementary school fundraiser. However, it’s possible that artist does not have experience performing at such events or may not want to, which users may not be aware of.
Because of this insight, it makes sense that a musician user should input what event types, venues, audience, and other qualities they’re open to.
That means that in order to design the search filter, I realized I needed to research the journeys of musicians seeking and accepting gigs.
🕘 This section is currently being revised!
📊 Hypothetical KPIs
🤔 To measure the success of this product, I would look at:
amount of user signups
amount of musicians contacted per user
amount of musicians booked by user
search completion time
how often users refine their searches
most and least-used filters and types of search terms (genre, style, community, sound, mood, etc)
amount and content of booking error/support tickets
user reviews, especially feature complaints and requests
referral rate
average booking value
the percentage of new users who successfully complete a booking within a specific time frame
🏆 Hypothetical wins would look like:
users reducing the overall time they spend finding the right musician, as well as reducing the time spent in the overall cycle of hiring and completing the payment
users praising in the reviews “this made it so much easier to find the right person who align with my organization’s values!”
users acknowledging and praising redesigns that improved their user experience in any way such as “I’m glad they added a feature for showing other venues the artist has performed at!”
an increasing growth in the percentage of artists booked per user or completion of the booking cycle/decrease in user abandonment
artists gradually increasing how often other artists to join the platform
an increasing rate in user satisfaction with the band’s performance, which indicates truly finding the right fit beyond the initial search
🤔 Hypothetical future considerations
If I were to further build this product with unlimited resources, I would:
Test it on users from an even wider variety of event planning backgrounds, including professional event planners. This would include card sorting exercises to better understand other ways users might seek artists.
Perform user research that takes wider accessibility needs into account
A/B test multiple versions of the same flows and page designs
Perform further user testing on other flows beyond just finding an artist, such as setting up the performance.
Heuristic reviews by other designers
Interview artists who would be featured on the platform about the booking journey from their perspective, create empathy maps
Build and test features for users to report unwanted, inappropriate behavior by artists and for artists to report such user behavior as well
Figure out ways to further refine search accuracy for users to further reach the objective stated above of finding the right artist
Come up with edge cases, such as some pretty bad conflict between an artist and an organizer
Test it for the KPIs mentioned above
…and much more!
