Case study 03 · SOURCE
Helping promoters discover more diverse lineups
End-to-end product design
The starting point
A lack of user research
Early on, I identified that we were moving into build without a clear problem definition or any user research.
The existing insights relied heavily on internal assumptions — specifically, team members leveraging their own experience as promoters.
To bridge this gap, I advocated for a temporary pause on developing to conduct user research. This allowed us to map the promoter persona, understand their end-to-end workflows, and validate actual pain points to ensure we built the right solution.
Research
Journey map
To ground our strategy in real user needs, I conducted six 60-minute, open-ended discovery interviews with external promoters.
Rather than testing specific UI concepts, I structured these sessions around their broader workflows — focusing specifically on the artist discovery and booking lifecycle. This allowed me to map their daily processes and pain points without introducing product bias.
Promoter journey map — securing a venue → building a line-up → finalising the booking
Synthesis
What were the biggest pain points for promoters?
Putting on an event is a complex puzzle — things are constantly changing; artists, budget, ticket prices, booking fees.
As the cost of booking artists continues to rise, prioritising the discovery of emerging talents has never been more crucial.
For smaller promoters, not having those key relationships makes it harder to book venues/artists.
The biggest pain point uncovered was the lack of responses from booking agents, leading to uncertainty regarding an artist's availability for booking.
🚩 Constraint
Getting time from promoters proved quite difficult. Therefore, we interviewed a majority of smaller promoters (1–5 events a year) as opposed to larger promoters (weekly events).
Alignment
Where did we want SOURCE to go?
To bridge user research with executive strategy, I facilitated a roadmap alignment workshop with key decision-makers to turn the qualitative insights into actionable product opportunities.
The session brought leadership together to evaluate these opportunities against core business goals, directly shaping and prioritising our strategic product roadmap. The outcomes were:
- Build a product that diversifies our revenue stream
- Eventually let SOURCE connect to RA Pro to build an event
- Use our event data to show availability
I borrowed a collaborative workshop framework developed by the NSW Department of Customer Service
⚠️ Learning
Stakeholders naturally jump straight to feature ideas when presented with user insights. Managing this momentum was a challenge — my role required repeatedly steering the team to stay anchored in the core user problem before committing to solutions.
Validation & ideation
Where are we showing up — and where should we?
I mapped promoter tasks and required support against RA's current feature set, colour-coding the gaps and overlaps to clearly visualise where our platform supports the user versus where product opportunities exist.
Why? I wanted to validate that our proposed opportunities represented genuine gaps in the current experience — and that they aligned with where promoters were actually showing up and what they needed.
Mapping promoter touchpoints and support against RA's current feature set
The product
What we ended with — SOURCE
The concept came together as three connected stages that mirror how promoters actually work — with a path to convert a curated list straight into an event in RA Pro.
- Filters & search
- Artist cards
- Artist sidebar
- Saving artists
- Saved artists & lists
- Planner mode
- Notifications
- Fee calculations
- Enquiry sent
- Making an offer
- Offer accepted
- Booking
Discover → Curate → Enquire → convert to an event in RA Pro.
Testing
Concept & in-production testing
The product evolved from an early concept into a working beta. Throughout, I ran concept testing on the discovery and list-building flows, then continued testing in production as the BETA came together.
Concept testing — the ‘Dream List’ flow
In-production testing as the BETA came together
Outcome
Successfully launched at ADE
The product evolved from an early concept into a working beta, launched at Amsterdam Dance Event.
However, we never felt confident we were solving a strong, validated user problem. SOURCE was an executive-led initiative to diversify revenue, meaning we were building within an established direction with a dedicated dev team, but no clear roadmap or reliable access to users.
As a Junior UX Designer leading the project, it taught me that a well-designed product isn't enough — you also need a validated problem and a clear path to adoption.
SOURCE — the launched BETA, discovering and curating artists