Organization

Eventology Solutions

Timeline

4 months

Responsibilities

Strategy, User Research, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping and Testing, Pitching

Role

Product Designer

Virgin Fest Los Angeles Mobile App

Overview

In its 50 years of diverse brands, Virgin sought to return to their record shop roots while looking to the future in the form of a brand new music festival experience. Virgin Fest set for its inaugural summer debut at the all-new Banc of California Stadium + Exposition Park in Downtown Los Angeles, with one simple yet impactful message: “EVERYONE IS WELCOME.”

The festival boasts a star-studded lineup, environmental initiatives, and innovative tech integration that echoes its welcoming attitude. We were approached to design and develop the official mobile app for the experience based on our features and creative solutions carrying such a message.

Challenges

Design and develop VFLA’s official mobile app that echoes the festival’s initiatives while anchoring it to Virgin’s legacy for a unique hybrid experience.

Approach

Combine out-of-the-box features with new creative solutions that encourage users to engage before, during, and after the event, wrapped up in a branded white-label product.

Key Takeaways

It was imperative to maintain an open line of communication across collaborative channels in order to evolve the product into an experience.

  • BRANDING: Public Address and Works Collective

    STRATEGY: Zac Cooner, Taryn Vitale, Micah Green, Rei Augustine

    ART DIRECTION and LEAD DESIGN: Rei Augustine

    DESIGN: Robert Maurice

    TECHNOLOGY DIRECTION: Taryn Vitale

    LEAD DEVELOPMENT: Taryn Vitale, Zac Cooner

    DEVELOPMENT: Shea Close, Braulio Lomeli, Darius Tall

    QA ENGINEERING: Karlo Martinez, Reshmi Ranjith

    CONTENT MANAGEMENT: Toree Hartman

Scoping the work

After the initial stakeholder meetings to understand the scope of the endeavor, the design team partnered up with the development team to workshop as many use cases as relevant to Virgin Fest. Luckily, we already had some of these built right in.

For the features and user experiences that needed time to design and develop, I mapped them out into 4 phases based on Value and realistic timing.

Designs

Our out-of-the-box features helped get us a portion of the way, however, significant work still needed to be done to get the product up to Virgin’s specifications. At the time most of these needed to be built out in Sprint bursts (hard-coded but would thereafter be integrated and/or dynamic). Requirements for Phase 1 were:

  • Full branding in areas that previously did not have it;

  • More involved onboarding process with data capture;

  • Integrated weather widget of festival location;

  • Integrated ticketing and account type linking;

  • Schedule information based on ticket type.

Because Virgin was already well aware of how our white label product worked, bare wireframes were not necessary, so we moved on to simple mockups. Once the flow was understood by the team, I detailed the mockups to interactive prototypes for the features that had yet to be developed. This significantly cut down on development lead time.

Results and key takeaways

There isn’t much that could’ve been done in the early days of 2020, and while it is regrettable to see Virgin Fest put on pause, it doesn’t mean all was for naught. In the end, we would continue striving for the grander message of the original goal of inclusivity for all, especially in the face of a global pandemic.

As the date ran closer to the event, the app would unveil more features such as smart AI assistance, gaming, commerce, and other immersive experiences.