Showcase
Designing for a startup creating a gig finding platform for musicians.
Introduction
Breaking into a city’s gig circuit shouldn’t feel like a cold-call. Yet in Chicago, 95 % of musicians we surveyed were hunting in the dark—no shared calendar, no warm intros, just luck. Over three months as the solo designer on Showcase, I partnered with two co-founders to flip the script. Our brief: build one hub where artists discover paid stage time and venues scout matching talent. How might we replace scattered DMs with a marketplace that lets local music book itself?
Client:
Showcase
My Role:
Founding Designer
Service Provided:
Product Design, Mobile Design
Process
I kicked off with a 45-musician survey and 15 deep-dive interviews, mapping the messy path from “any gigs tonight?” to stepping on stage. Three pain clusters surfaced:
Invisible Venues – even seasoned players couldn’t locate open stages without insider tips.
Collab Fatigue – Instagram already handled networking; musicians craved bookings, not another social feed.
Payment Unknowns – artists rarely knew pay or equipment details before committing.
A competitive scan showed no laser-focused gig-finder. We therefore scoped Showcase’s MVP to a lean web app that:
Surfaces gigs by genre and ZIP code.
Lets artists apply with one click and attach reels.
Equips venues with a dashboard for events, calendars, and applicant chat.
This tight mandate guided rapid Figma sprints, card-sort tests, and two critique cycles, keeping build time under six weeks.
Result
Showcase now serves both sides of the stage:
Musicians get a filterable gig board, rich venue profiles, and a live application tracker.
Venues manage listings through a calendar-driven dashboard, review booking requests, and showcase pay ranges.
The Chicago beta launched eight weeks after kickoff. Outcomes: median time to first application plummeted from days of cold emailing to under ten minutes, and venues filled 70 % of posted dates within a week. Users called the flow “as easy as ordering takeout.” Early traction secured seed funding and a roadmap to expand into Austin and Nashville—proof that local music thrives when discovery is just a click away.
