Crowdpleaser

The Goal

Crowdpleaser is designed to serve as a social platform that enhances the live music experience by enabling concert-goers to share their experiences, connect with others who share similar interests, and discover new events and artists.

To achieve these goals, the app offers the following features:

• A concert rating and reviewing system, allowing users to upload set lists and media to provide detailed insights for others
• The ability to follow other users or artists, making it easy to stay informed about their recent activity and upcoming events
• A personalized home page that recommends artists, events, and users based on individual preferences and past interactions

Personas and Scenarios

To better understand the use cases for our apps, my team and I developed diverse personas representing the app's potential user base. These fictional characters were given real-world goals, motivations, and challenges to ground each of our design processes in the user's perspective. By empathizing with these personas, I ensured that my design decisions were user-centered, prioritizing their needs and experiences at every stage of development and helping me create a product that felt intuitive and meaningful to my platform's users.

A couple of these personas included a 16-year-old high schooler named Rory and a 70-year-old retired woman named Beth. Their backgrounds and motivations steered the direction of my design to focus on creating connections and a sense of belonging.

Sketches

After developing a clear understanding of the use cases for Crowdpleaser, I began sketching designs for the app's four main pages. Using pen and paper allowed me to quickly iterate on ideas, ensuring the designs remained flexible and open to feedback and refinement. This approach also provided the opportunity to experiment with various layouts and visual hierarchies for each page.

The Process

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Building on these sketches, I created low-fidelity wireframes in Figma to translate my concepts into a more structured format. These wireframes facilitated early feedback on the app's layout and features, helping me refine the user experience before moving into higher-fidelity designs.

High-Fidelity Prototype

Using my component library, I transformed stagnant wireframes into a high-fidelity prototype of Crowdpleaser, incorporating motion design to simulate a fully functional app experience.

This was an iterative process, gathering peer feedback at each stage to identify areas for improvement and refine both the user experience and visual design. This approach enabled me to explore multiple solutions, enhance usability, and address potential pain points early. The final high-fidelity prototype effectively captured the intended functionality, aesthetic, and user flow of Crowdpleaser, delivering a polished and cohesive representation of the app.

Branding and Component Library

Having decided the goals and layout of the app, I designed its branding. I wanted to visually channel the essence of live music events and their vibrant energy. I selected a dark purple theme with orange accents to evoke the atmosphere of concerts, which typically take place in dimly lit venues with colorful light shows. This color scheme was designed to capture the mood and excitement of concerts while encouraging users to engage with the app and its community in a way that feels both fun and authentic to the concert-going experience.

To bring my branding vision to life, I created a component library in Figma that incorporated Crowdpleaser's color scheme and typography into UI elements such as buttons, cards, and menus. This library served as a modular system for building the middle-fidelity prototype, allowing for consistent design while maintaining flexibility for iteration and refinement based on user feedback. This approach streamlined the design process, ensuring that changes could be implemented efficiently without compromising the app's cohesive visual identity.