upstage
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Upstage started out as a covid project.
Missing concerts, seeing favorite artists perform live, and talking about it with music loving friends was one of the things I, as well as many of my friends, were missing most. Binging Netflix series’ and youtube documentaries quickly became our pastime, the thing we would all chat about.
When one of my friends brought up how nice it would be if we could watch any concert by any artist we wanted, like Netflix, I was immediately interested in what the possibilities could be.
Hence born UpStage. A passion project for the “What If?”
What if
What if every concert was recorded? You could pick and choose what to tune into, live or pre-recorded.
What if you could watch a professional video of that concert, or watch concert-goers own personal videos?
A cross between Netflix, Youtube, and Spotify all in one, UpStage would allow you to do all that and more.
As much as we’d like this idea to be a reality, I was curious if anyone else would use it. (And from my UX background it’s engrained in me to do at least some user research/testing before I begin to do anything.)
I simply sent out a brief questionnaire asking peoples’ thoughts, opinions, and how likely they would be to use it if it existed. Overwhelmingly, the response was that they’d be interested.
customer journey map
The importance of a customer journey map is first and foremost to understand what your ideal consumer wants and needs. Getting into their mindset will tell a developer or designer what assets they need to implement, create, and innovate on. UpStage would solve a problem that currently exists among music lovers and concert goers today.
The concept of watching a concert online is not a foreign one, with some posted on Youtube garnering over millions of views. Concert movies are also popular, take One Direction, Justin Bieber, or Billie Eilish for example. The audience for an app like this is there, but nothing has been created yet.
Components
discovery Catered For You
User uploaded + Professional Quality Content
Interactivity
wireframes
Mapping out the functionality of UpStage was crucial in order to figure out how all the various elements could be included, and where best they could be integrated. The content that should be prioritized, ie what users may be looking for when first opening the app, can all be found one the Home page. I took inspiration from Spotify whilst creating the homepage.
This is an app for music lovers, it would make sense if some of the basic structure resembled one of the most popular music apps. Creating categories revolving around music genres and a recommended “for you” were strategic.
branding
multidevice useage
UpStage is first and foremost a concert viewing app. It only makes sense that its users may want to watch on a larger screen. Optimizing the format for a website was a crucial step in order for the app to be best utilized.