Couldn’t find event details
Basic event info was buried in the navigation. Users had to hunt for what should have been obvious.
Slove · 2023 · Mobile · Client work · Research led
Helping musicians trust a venue with a $1,500 gig
Problem
Slove books musicians into venues, often for over a thousand dollars a gig. The flow was “pay now, sort out the details later”, and people backed out at the payment screen.
My role
Product designer for the mobile app on a freelance client project. Teammates covered the desktop app and research; on mobile I ran discovery calls, card sorting, IA, prototyping and usability testing through to delivery. Shipped to the client in 3 months, then stayed on for another year on the product and website.
Outcome
Task success went from 60% to 100% across three rounds of moderated tests. In the live app, conversion rose 15 points and abandonment fell 18 points.
Committing $1,500 on that little information felt like a gamble. So people didn’t.
60% → 100%Task success (12 of 12, final usability round)
+15 ppConversion rate
-18 ppAbandonment rate
+25 ppUser confidence
Moderated tests, 12 users per round. Confidence from a one-question survey after the flow. Conversion and abandonment from the client’s analytics, old flow vs new.
What the research surfaced
Hesitated to pay
Without upfront equipment needs, timing, or responsibilities, paying felt like a leap of faith.
The insight
I expected the fix to be fewer steps. The research pushed me the other way: users wanted more to go on before committing.
Every interview landed on the same thing: people would happily spend longer if it meant understanding what they were agreeing to. So I designed for clarity, even where that meant adding steps, and tested each fix with users before the next.
Round 1: swipe to scroll navigation
Swiping felt too much like a dating app. Scroll and dark mode gave a more professional feel.
swipe · scroll
Round 2: “likelihood” became “match %”
Made cards fully clickable, cut the info density, and rewrote confusing booking-probability copy.
before · after
Round 3: credibility signals on profiles
Venue profiles felt unreliable, so I added proof of played gigs, upcoming events, and social links.
no proof · now feels legit
No reviews · No history · No socials
adding proof
4.8(243)
0gigs played
3upcoming
Socials
feels unreliable
A deliberate trade-off
Booking time went up. Everything else went up too.
The new flow takes almost twice as long. Task success, confidence and conversion all went up anyway, because users finally understood what they were agreeing to before hitting “pay.”
Decisions
Four calls, what each replaced, and what it cost.
Scroll and dark mode
instead of: Swipe (read as a dating app)
cost: A more playful feel
Four facts per card
instead of: The full match explanation on the card
cost: The score explanation sits one tap deeper
“Match”
instead of: “Likelihood”, the model’s word
cost: A slightly less precise word
Showing “0 gigs played”
instead of: Hiding empty proof
cost: New venues look untested
60% → 100%Task success rate
Conversion up 15 points and abandonment down 18 points in the live app after the client shipped. In testing, the tasks people failed in round 1 were the ones the research flagged first: finding basic event details. By round 3, 12 of 12 got through.
Reflection
The obvious fix would have shipped in a week and made things worse. The research is what stopped me.
This is the project that taught me to trust the research over the obvious answer. If you’re designing for trust in a high-stakes flow, payments, bookings, anywhere people hesitate before committing, I’d love to compare notes.
natalia.wlwsk@gmail.com →