Every famous artist had to start somewhere, right?
Childish Gambino and Lady Gaga both went to NYU and performed in nearby venues, wouldn’t it have been rad to go to an early show?
Showbase analyzes your taste in music based on your spotify listening history and features young artists playing near you that you’ll love. Instead of another boring night, go find your new favorite artist.
All of the artists featured are approved and curated by the Showbase team. The artist can then post an event, sell tickets, and recieve real time analytics from their new fans response to the show.
This project was a super quick turn around, allowing for a week of design time and 3 weeks of iteration with the eng team to launch an MVP.
Showbase analyzes your taste in music based on your spotify listening history and features young artists playing near you that you’ll love. Instead of another boring night, go find your new favorite artist.
All of the artists featured are approved and curated by the Showbase team. The artist can then post an event, sell tickets, and recieve real time analytics from their new fans response to the show.
This project was a super quick turn around, allowing for a week of design time and 3 weeks of iteration with the eng team to launch an MVP.
Artist onboarding
Naturally, the sign in flow + onboarding is the first experience a user has with the product, so the goal was to visually emulate the feeling a lot of performance venues had. The background was blurred and mysterious with patches of light and a smokey colored form.
If the user was opting to sign up as a musician, they go through a 3 step onboarding process:
01. Account creation - just the basic information necessary for listing them on the service
02. Musical profile - this screen gives them an opportunity to list their genres, briefly describe themselves, and link any relevant social media.
03. The actual sound - artists are asked to link their personal site, Soundcloud or Bandcamp, and add a photo. This will help the approval board check out their work and fit them into the recommendation algorithm.
If the user was opting to sign up as a musician, they go through a 3 step onboarding process:
01. Account creation - just the basic information necessary for listing them on the service
02. Musical profile - this screen gives them an opportunity to list their genres, briefly describe themselves, and link any relevant social media.
03. The actual sound - artists are asked to link their personal site, Soundcloud or Bandcamp, and add a photo. This will help the approval board check out their work and fit them into the recommendation algorithm.
The guide: browse vs. timeline
The core of the experience, from a normal user’s perspective, is the guide. The guide is where all the algorithmically recommended artists are presented, broken down into a “browse” section and a “timeline” section.
The browse portion weights the order of artists based on relevance, not time. It takes in a combination of inputs (% taste match, friends attending, location, price, and time) to generate a prioritized set of recommendations. The focus here is more on the artist, less on the actual show.
The timeline section allows a user to explore based exclusively on time. If they’re looking for something to do tonight (or want to plan ahead for the weekend), they can tap directly into that day.
All of the content can be filtered by genre through the genre’s menu triggered by the FAB (floating action button) in the bottom right corner.
The browse portion weights the order of artists based on relevance, not time. It takes in a combination of inputs (% taste match, friends attending, location, price, and time) to generate a prioritized set of recommendations. The focus here is more on the artist, less on the actual show.
The timeline section allows a user to explore based exclusively on time. If they’re looking for something to do tonight (or want to plan ahead for the weekend), they can tap directly into that day.
All of the content can be filtered by genre through the genre’s menu triggered by the FAB (floating action button) in the bottom right corner.
There were a ton of different design directions explored based on feedback from the product owner, Julian. The iterations reflect both exploration into different visual stylings and additional functionality requests.
Artist profiles
The browse page allowed a user to quickly sample an artist’s music but the profiles offered a wholistic look at the artist. The hero of the page is the top track, followed by a short bio and genre pivots.
The artist’s full track list is featured in the tracks section and can be hand picked by the artist or simply uploaded through Soundcloud’s API. The shows tab lists all the upcoming shows and an option to RSVP or buy tickets if necessary. The page was built to support deeplinking into various sections of the page.
The page also pulls in reviews from other users that saw the artist live, as well as any press/critic quotes the artist may have received.
If the user is an artist, they have the ability to create "shows" that will be listed on their pages. This allows other users to RSVP and for the artist to get rich analytics from their new fans.
The artist’s full track list is featured in the tracks section and can be hand picked by the artist or simply uploaded through Soundcloud’s API. The shows tab lists all the upcoming shows and an option to RSVP or buy tickets if necessary. The page was built to support deeplinking into various sections of the page.
The page also pulls in reviews from other users that saw the artist live, as well as any press/critic quotes the artist may have received.
If the user is an artist, they have the ability to create "shows" that will be listed on their pages. This allows other users to RSVP and for the artist to get rich analytics from their new fans.
A brand inspired by NYC nightlife
The client's request for the logo was to feel like an agency mark that felt modern, with a hint of "tech" and to incorporate the "S" and "b" from the name Showbase. The client loved the name and wanted the logo to really reinforce the actual wordmark.
In addition, given NYC venues are very much a part of the user journeys, I wanted to make sure the mark would work with a smokey, dark color palette. This would ensure that it would never look out of place in a venue or next to show art work.
In addition, given NYC venues are very much a part of the user journeys, I wanted to make sure the mark would work with a smokey, dark color palette. This would ensure that it would never look out of place in a venue or next to show art work.
