Lounge App
Ambev
About the Project
Ambev Brazil invited me to a freelance Lead Designer position for its new digital product, an app that promotes a digital festival-like experience. The goal was streaming live concerts, interviews, and even workshops while getting people to know each other, buy Ambev's beverages, and having the opportunity to get in touch with artists during the live streams.
The idea came during the pandemic. While people were locked in their houses Ambev saw an increasing number of views in the company's promoted streams. Also, watching a live stream was becoming a brand new event in which people call their friends and relatives to grab a beer and watch it together during video calls.
Brazilians make quite an intense audience and love to feel closer to their idols.
Design process
At first, our bets were on enabling group conversation via online chat in which users could have a kind of "tinder" experience by finding people with similar tastes in music and beer. Once you had a match you could start a private conversation and exchange discount coupons as a gift.
Setting a reminder for when the stream was about to start and schedule a beverage delivery was also a strong hypothesis of ours.
We had a lot going on at the brainstorming table (or better said, at our Zoom room) and the possibility to create an app from scratch. While we were creating hypotheses on what would actually be attractive for our audience we were also finding the product's identity.
We designed many versions looking for the product interaction framework. How the users would go from an app area to another? How could they set an alarm or program a delivery? How the matching would work? And most important, how could we design a festival experience that a person could transit between stages?
Design, test, and design again.
Once we had a full version it was time to validate it with real users. We ran a 12 people interview to find what's really appealing to them. We were able to define interesting findings by doing an affinity diagram with the team, here are the main outcomes:
People already use WhatsApp, Telegram, or video calls such as Google Meet and Zoom to have talk with friends and family, therefore it wouldn’t make sense to have a chat at the app.
Having the live stream following users throughout the whole navigation is important to create that stage-to-stage festival sensation in which people still listening to the music even when searching for the next attraction.
Users want to be part of the live-stream and feel closer to their idols by helping them to set the line-up or choosing the next song.
They were willing to try a new beverage or drink once they received a discount coupon from the artist.
With those findings, we went back to sketch and designed our vision for the application with a couple of adjustments. We also created its brand, Lounge, and with it a final visual identity.
The app
Lounge App promotes a personalized live-stream festival on your cellphone, you can select the subjects, artists, and styles of your interest. The purpose of the app is to bring people closer to their idols, so it isn't only about virtual concerts, artists are free to do whatever they want in a stream and choose how to interact with the public.
We believe live-stream will continuously be a huge part of our culture.
That's why Lounge aims to deliver more types of contents such as workshops, events, festivals, and interviews, being a channel to people enjoy content they like at any time, on any device, with the possibility of giving constant feedback to artists.
Check Lounge's Streams at https://www.lounge.app.br/home
Team
- Bruno Vaz, Lead Designer
- Raphael Barreto, Lead Designer
- Kamila Moreira, UX Designer
- Dener Patrick, Product Designer
- Lucas Inacio, Front-end Developer
- Daniel Albino, Front-end Developer
- Clarisse Nassar, Product Owner