Academic
Bringing performers and venues together with less friction
A dual-sided booking platform for musicians and venues, designed end to end.
The short version
Problem: Booking talent is fragmented across Instagram DMs, spreadsheets and word of mouth. Venues and performers need one clear place to find each other and confirm gigs.
What I did: Researched both sides, designed mirrored dashboards and flows, and validated the structure with card sorting and moderated usability tests.
Result: A high-fidelity platform concept where performers and venues can onboard, profile, request, message and book without the usual chaos.
The challenge
There was no centralized, filterable list of talent or availability, unclear onboarding for both sides, weak communication workflows, and little visibility into past performances or requests.
Research
Three personas guided the work: Talia (musician), Brad (venue owner) and Ben (talent booker). Heuristic reviews of Facebook Groups, Instagram and spreadsheets showed gaps in searchability, trust and usability — especially for bookers over 30.
UX strategy
Dual dashboards keep each role on an actionable path. Booking, messaging and requests stay front and centre. Soft handoffs — messaging, saved profiles, availability filters — match how real gigs get booked.
Testing
Moderated sessions with participants aged 23–49 covered booking, accepting requests, account creation, profile updates and past bookings. Core flows completed successfully; card sorting shaped Booking, Performer Profiles and Event Details groupings.
Reflection
Designing for two mindsets forced clarity. Next steps would be payments, calendar sync and reviews — but the core proof is that booking a band should not be harder than finding one.
