Building the World's First Fan Engagement Platform:
From Idea to Industry Game-Changer
Overview
Create the world's first seamless artist-fan engagement platform
User research
Competitive analysis
Service design
Wireframing
User interface design
Mobile app design
Prototyping
Design system creation
Preparing for investment
Developer collaboration
Team alignment workshop
Fully detailed journey maps
User flow diagrams
Design system
Wireframes
User interface designs
High-fidelity prototype
Industry-first solution
300% increase in engagement
$2M+ funding raised
Jira
Figma & Figjam
Confluence
The Story: When social media algorithms kill authentic connections, someone needs to build a better way
Picture this: A brilliant indie artist with 50,000 devoted fans can't actually connect with them. Instagram's algorithm shadow-bans their posts. TikTok's for-you page is a lottery. Twitter feels like shouting into the void. Meanwhile, their most passionate supporters are desperate for genuine interaction but get lost in the noise of corporate social media.
This broken relationship between artists and fans wasn't just frustrating - it kills creativity and crushes dreams. Talented artists struggle to monetise their work effectively, and fans feel disconnected from the creators they love. When the CEO approached us with a vision to fix this fundamental problem, we knew we were onto something special.
But turning "let's help artists connect with fans" into the world's first comprehensive fan engagement platform? That would require rethinking everything about how digital relationships work.
The Problem: When Algorithms Kill Authentic Connection
Getting Inside the Artist-Fan Relationship
We didn't want to build another social media platform or generic fan tool. We needed to understand what authentic connection actually looks like in the digital age. Thus we conducted in-depth user and market research to uncover the artists' and fans pain points as well as the opportunities to delight and create the optimal experience for everyone.
The Creator Economy
Social media platforms limit artists’ ability to reach their own fans, causing “algorithm anxiety” - uncertainty about whether content will be seen.
The Artists
Need solutions that help them build real relationships with fans, monetise their work in a way that feels right, and preserve their creative freedom, rather than just providing more metrics or generic features.
The Fans
Don’t want to be marketed to - they want to be part of the artist's journey.
The Process: An iterative and lean design approach
Journey Maps
We created comprehensive journey maps to visualise the broken artist-fan relationship across existing social media platforms, revealing how algorithmic interference disrupted authentic connections at every touchpoint. These maps exposed the emotional frustration points where artists lost control of their audience and fans missed content from their favourite creators, highlighting the critical moments where platform dependency damaged the relationship. The journey mapping process helped identify the specific intervention points where our platform could restore direct communication and eliminate the middleman platforms that were fragmenting the creator-fan ecosystem.
User Flows
We designed detailed user flows to map how artists would seamlessly transition from fragmented social media management to unified fan engagement through our platform's intelligent overlay system. These flows demonstrated how fans could discover, engage with, and support artists without disrupting their natural content consumption patterns, ensuring the technology felt invisible rather than intrusive. The user flow documentation was essential for showing stakeholders how the platform would integrate into existing artist workflows whilst providing fans with progressive engagement opportunities that felt organic rather than forced.
Prototype
We developed interactive prototypes of the context-aware overlay system to test how fans would respond to engagement opportunities that appeared at natural break points in content consumption rather than as disruptive pop-ups. These prototypes allowed us to validate the adaptive design system that matched each artist's existing brand aesthetic, ensuring the platform enhanced rather than competed with their visual identity.
These prototypes were delivered under high time pressure, as they were required to enable the team to pitch the new product to investors.
Mobile-first Design System
We introduced a design system that leverages Figma's powerful variables, to allow for easy and consistent customisation. This future-proofed the project, allowing the team to seamlessly integrate with each artist's unique visual identity, without the explicit need for a senior designer. The design system and the specific places set up for customisation ensure that every element - from typography hierarchy to colour transitions - feel native to the artists' existing brand rather than like an external widget
The Solution: Invisible Technology, Visible Connection
Enhancement, Not Replacement
Rather than creating another platform that artists had to promote, we designed a system that enhanced their existing content and workflows. The best fan engagement tool would be one that fans barely noticed but artists couldn't live without.
Engagement without the interruption
We designed a context-aware overlay that enhanced rather than interrupted content.
Smart positioning: Automatically avoids interfering with content.
Adaptive design: Matching the aesthetic of each artist's existing brand by utilising a modular design system with clearly defined areas for customisation.
The Result: From Concept to Industry Game-Changer
USD 2M+
Funding Raised
40% reduction in development time through shared component library
Pixel-perfect implementation
using detailed design specifications