Cadenza
Connecting fans to artists during the show
Desktop and Mobile Livestream Web Experience
My role
Timeline
Lead Product Designer
Visual Design
User Research
Skip to:
OVERVIEW
3 months
Why solve this problem?
What is Cadenza?
Cadenza is a platform that connects artists and fans in real time through curated, high-quality live-streamed performances. The founders discovered a demand from music fans to experience a more intentional connection to their favorite artists and set out to discover ways to bring them together.
What is the problem?
The idea of a fan-to-artist live chat was at the center of the Cadenza product, but had yet to be designed and tested. The Head of Design and I aimed to uncover concert goer motivations and artists’ appetite for fan connection during a live show.
Collaboration
Jon Landre, Head of Design
Jason Mattiace, Chief Technology Officer
At the core of Cadenza’s value prop was the connection between artists and fan in a live concert setting. I wanted to test that this was indeed something users wanted and desired to set Cadenza up for success as a new product and company.
Tools
Figma, Zeplin, Photoshop, Zoom (for user interviews)
How will we measure success?
As a team, we defined success for our live chat feature as…
80% of users click on the Ask The Artist tab to view or comment
10+ questions asked on the Ask The Artist tab
50% of users have at least one interaction with the chat (comment, like, etc)
DISCOVERY
Uncovering user needs and desires
I conducted qualitative interviews with 10 livestream fans (current Instagram Live and Reddit users) who walked me through their chat and live experiences. Interviewees ranged from ages 18 to 42 located in a variety of major US cities and small towns.
From testing, two key insights emerged that would drive our design process:
Users want the ability to support other comments that they like or believe in.
Users like options for how they view comments.
Finding the themes
We studied responses from our customer interviews and grouped them together through affinity mapping. This highlighted some of the most important features that customers desired to see in their live feed experiences. Of these desires, the ability to sort through comments efficiently and easily was a top priority.
Examining the competition
Through competitive analysis, I compared similar products to Cadenza and noted their offerings.
To succeed in a saturated landscape, we needed to include all of the features performing well across competitors and more. Combining comment voting and filtering from Reddit with comment liking and profile personalization from Instagram and Facebook Live, we’re able to provide the familiarity of other live channel experiences.
“I go on Instagram Live in hopes that the host will read one of my comments.”
“I like how Reddit has several filter options for comments. I can find things faster and with floods of comments, it feels less overwhelming.”
“I need engagement. I’m not just going to sit there and watch.”
create an engaging chat experience for users who crave connection with their favorite artists?
HOW MIGHT WE
DESIGN
Sketching it out
Based on findings from user research, I generated two design solutions for our MVP feature.
1. A Cadenza live stream user can submit a thoughtful question to the artist during the show that will be answered during the Ask The Artist show breaks
2. A Cadenza user can upvote another user's question to promote its likelihood of being selected by the artist.
Live stream on mobile web
Graduating to high fidelity
After conducting guerrilla usability testing among friends and music lovers, I moved forward with our design choices as mid fidelity screens.
Since we were focusing on the chat feature for the MVP, I looked at a few different options for where future features would live, noted as Cards and Widgets in these designs.
Exploring visual treatments
I pursued 3 visual treatments for the chat upvoting and downvoting experience. Through usability testing and human-centered design principles,
we opted out of using green or red for like or dislike as these generally indicate a user's action has succeeded or failed, not a preference.
Delivering the final designs
The final experience included the Ask The Artist live chat tab, standard stream chat, and comment voting.
EVALUATE & ITERATE
Measuring Success & Next Steps
Using clickstream data from our first show featuring artist Chelsea Cutler, we hit most of our business objectives:
We hit our goal of 10+ questions in the Ask The Artist chat with a total of 22.
58% of users interacted with the chat in some form
Only 70% of users clicked on the Ask The Artist tab
This was a great result for our first live concert. One of the design revisions we wanted to make since we didn’t meet our 80% benchmark for users on the ATA tab was to create an onboarding experience for this tab as it’s unique to Cadenza.
Once the product launched, we gathered feedback from show attendees through a survey. We learned that the Ask The Artist feature was the most exciting feature for users. One piece of feedback we received was to integrate more breaks in the show for the musician to read the Ask The Artist questions and get back to fans.
Cadenza as a product was put on hold a few months later. I’m very content with the work we were able to create, the artists we were able to showcase, and the fans we brought out through this experience.
