Urban Pulse Festival App

Overview

A mobile app designed for hip-hop festival attendees to explore artist lineups, maps, and schedules in an intuitive and expressive interface inspired by hip-hop culture.

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Problem

There are few experiences that rival the exhilaration of a live music festival. These events transform open grounds into a vibrant tapestry of sound, light, friendship, and freedom, where music enthusiasts from all walks of life come together to celebrate their favorite artists, discover new musical treasures, and create unforgettable memories.

To elevate this experience to new heights, The task was to design a beautiful mobile application tailored specifically for a niche music festival of one day. The goal was to craft not just an event guide, but as an essential companion that amplifies every facet of the festival adventure.

Design Process

Wireframing

For wireframing, I first analyzed the dynamic needs of festival-goers and the music festival environment. I aimed to design a user-friendly interface with quick access to essential information, an intuitive schedule and artist navigation, and engaging interactions to elevate the overall experience. Drawing early inspiration from various festival apps (prioritizing usability over genre), I then translated my sitemap into a clean, structured wireframe.

Testing Wireframes

Wireframe to Hi-Fi

Before I stated the Hi-Fi prototype, I envisioned a hip-hop aesthetic using dark colors, bold street-style fonts, and elements like graffiti. My initial step was to come up with a hierarchy of importance for all app elements. During my ideation, I realized my first color palette was too dull to convey the vibrant nature of hip-hop. To rectify this, I chose black as the dominant color to signify nightlife and the festival setting. Selecting the secondary colors was more challenging, but I ultimately settled on gold, one of hip-hop's main colors, to provide the necessary pop. I briefly considered using black and white images, a common hip-hop expression, but decided to stick with colored photos to avoid a boring aesthetic and maintain liveliness.

Takeaways

This project gave me the opportunity to apply human-centered design thinking to create a product that balances culture, usability, and aesthetics. It pushed me to think critically about how design decisions, from color and typography to navigation and hierarchy, directly influence user experience.

Throughout the process, I learned to translate cultural identity into digital form, experimenting with different visual patterns and interactions that capture the raw, expressive nature of hip-hop while remaining functional and intuitive. Testing and iteration taught me the importance of small usability details and how even subtle adjustments can make navigation feel more coherent.

In the end, I delivered a high-fidelity prototype that not only reflects the energy of hip-hop but also enhances the festival experience through clarity and accessibility. This project deepened my understanding of how design can merge storytelling, emotion, and functionality, creating an experience that both resonates with users and feels authentic to the culture it represents.

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