What is this project about?
For this past semester, my group and I worked with Innovatemap, a UX consultation group based in Indianapolis, IN that helps businesses with Product Design, Branding, and Business Strategy. Amplify is an idea for a handoff service relating to concerts and community building through social media. This idea was given to our team at Purdue UX to explore and develop over the course of the semester.

What were our goals?
Our goals were to understand users' needs, expert and novice underground music concert goers, with research methods like desk research and interviews. By understanding the needs of users, we aimed to connect new users to existing underground music communities as well as allow existing users to join new groups and build connections without intruding on the systems already in place in the underground music field.

What did the process look like?
After conducting research and interviews with band members and fans, we had a solid background on the user group and what their experiences consist of. We began sketching and ideating features that would be useful for our users. This led to us hosting a workshop in which multiple fans attended. We had them do a feature rating on stickynotes, as well as rating features based on importance and usage frequency. We used this information gathered to create an initial interface to user test. The user testing allowed us to improve our design and create a final UI for the amplify app.

Were there any pivots in the project?
There was a change in the initial route of the project after we had completed interviews. The original plan for the project was to create a new platform that allowed fans to connect with each other. We conducted interviews which informed us that underground concert goers are not necessarily going to these concerts to meet people, they prefer to go with friends or go by themselves. We also found that Instagram was already working for bands to advertise upcoming shows. This led us to create a hand-off (for discoverability and lack of information) instead of a brand new platform.

What were my contributions?
In this project I had completed multiple interviews, led sponsor meetings, helped ideate, sketched and created multiple wireframes, and conducted desk research. I gained a lot of confidence this semester with my interviewing skills, what the process of UX projects look like, and with project management.