Bandsintown Concept — Evaluating the existing experience of a useful app and proposing design solutions for improvement
As a musician and avid show goer I frequently buy tickets so far in advance, I forget that I have them. Because of that I constantly need to check whether I have tickets to a show when trying to make plans with others.
I use Bandsintown, a free concert listing and discovery application which helps me track my favorite artists, purchase tickets, set reminders, and browse shows coming to town based on my musical preferences.
While Bandsintown is extremely useful it could certainly use some improvements.
Bandsintown — Overview
After evaluating the app, I identified three key areas that provided the most opportunity for improvement — User profile, Track more artists and Events.
User profile — Evaluation
After evaluating the app, I identified two key areas that provided the most opportunity for improvement—User Profile and Track More Artists.
When you arrive at your profile you are greeted with the list of artists you are tracking with a tab to see your friends presented in the same format.
There is not much information to glean from this user’s profile to make me want to befriend or connect with them.
Elements from the artist profile page could be repurposed on users’ profiles.
Knowing what events a user is planning on going to, seeing memories and photos from past shows they have attended, or knowing a bit more about their musical interests would be good information to have to help decide whether to connect with someone.
The format in which the show date on the artist profile is displayed works especially well for a quick read.
User profile — Goals
Make the profile page more of a “profile page.”
Increase social engagement on the platform by giving more opportunities for users to form connections based off shared musical taste or event attendance.
Utilize UI elements from artist profile page and improve the way dates are displayed so users can more easily scan their RSVPs.
User profile — Benchmarks
User profile — Sketches
User profile — Proposed solution
User profile — Before & after
Track more artists — Evaluation
In order to arrive at the “Track More Artists” screen you must click the “Find More Artists To Track” button located in the Artists tab of your profile or the “Track More Artists” button located in the settings of your profile page.
Neither location is where I would think to find this feature. Instead, I would expect it to be featured more prominently as one of the main goals of the app is to get you to track artists.
Each time you arrive at the Track More Artists screen you are presented with an overlay instruction to “Double tap genres you want to track and explore.”
The instruction was slightly unclear, but after playing around I realized that double clicking the genre circle adds artists from that genre to the list for you to discover. So you can select multiple genres to browse.
Okay so now we are in “Rock,” I see that U2 is automatically selected… just like when Apple forced their album upon us. Oh and you can still track The Beatles for some reason. I didn’t think they were still touring.
There does not seem to be a way to narrow in on a sub-genres or filter your results.
I would assume that most frequent show goers (like myself) are locked into their favorite genre and would benefit from some kind of filtering option.
The search bar style does not match any of the others in the app. It looks like they almost just forgot about it.
The use of circle artist images here is also inconsistent with how they are displayed elsewhere.
Also, not to be the genre police but they have chosen to use art from Streetlight Manifesto, a decidedly not Reggae band for the genre’s image. I tried to ignore it…
I appreciate that the genre selection remains fixed as I scroll so I can easily change that as I go.
Another thing that works well is the use the checkmarks to quickly pick artists to track.
Track more artists — Goals
Pull this page out from the Profile section and make it a more prominent feature of the app.
Add more granular filtering options for sub-genres which will allow users to more easily discover artists that fit their particular taste.
Add the ability to search or filter for artists by location because it would be nice if Bandsintown helped you discover bands in your town.
Adjust UI to be more consistentMaintain the use of the checkmark so that users can quickly explore the list of artists and select those they wish to track.
Track more artists — Benchmarks
Track more artists — Sketches
Track more artists — Information hierarchy
I spent much of my time ideating around what information is important to display at this level.
Screen 1: I thought maybe showing the next closest show to the user would be best but ultimately decided against it so as not to just be another events section.
Screen 2: If I didn’t display the next show, at least indicating if a band is on tour seemed important. I also added in the amount of Trackers. In this instance I was adjusting their language and opted for “followers” instead.
Screen 3: I thought it might be nice to display what town the artist is from or based in. This would likely play a more useful role in smaller acts who are more likely to play around town more often.
Screen 4: Getting closer I tightened up the header a bit giving search and location filter their own space. I also expanded their color palette a little bit and focused on ensuring things were more accessible as far as contrast.
Track more artists — Proposed solution
Walkthrough video
Track more artists — Before & after
Events — Evaluation
With a little time to spare I decided to take a quick pass at improving the Events page.
The location filter is very large for something that likely doesn’t get used that frequently.
I track both of these artists and they are playing the same show. There could be a better way to display artists who are on the same bill.
I have been in situations where I track all 4 artists on a large bill and they are each displayed in the feed with no other indication they are together other than the venue name being the same.
Combining Artists, Events and RSVPs into one section like this is confusing.
If artist search is given its own section of the app and RSVPs are communicated in the events feed this page can be refocused on the core information: all events in town, recommended shows and tracked artist shows.
A search bar here might also be nice
Events — Goals
Focus solely on upcoming events in this section by removing artists tab.
Maintain the use of the checkmark from the Track Artists page for a quicker read of shows you have RSVP’d to.
Include a search bar to search events by artist or venue.
Solve how tracked bands playing the same show are displayed.
Adjust UI to match proposed solutions.
Events — Benchmarks
Focus solely on upcoming events in this section by removing artists tab.
Maintain the use of the checkmark from the Track Artists page for a quicker read of shows you have RSVP’d to.
Include a search bar to search events by artist or venue.
Solve how tracked bands playing the same show are displayed.
Adjust UI to match proposed solutions.
Events — Proposed solution
Events — Before & after
Wrap up — Proposed solutions
Final walkthrough video
Final thoughts — Next steps
Further develop settings menu, friends list and edit screens for the user profile which I had made initial sketches of.
Push design of location filter further. Many of the benchmarks utilize a full screen overlay interaction for similar features which could provide an opportunity to expand the design language of the app.
Explore ways to bring back in featured/popular events, promoted content and curated lists.
Consider moving notifications into the profile section as is common in many of the benchmarks