Hire a live entertainer for your special event.
Special Guest helps people find and hire live entertainers in their area to perform at their special events. From birthday parties to weddings and everything in between, there are entertainers ready to make any special event unforgettable.
Our Mission: To Get Talented Entertainers More Paying Gigs.
About Special Guest
Special Guest is the premier marketplace for live entertainment place. It was originally the idea of actor, writer, comedian Daman Wayans Jr. who partnered with experienced entrepreneur Kris Jones in 2018. An MVP was built by celebrated independent game maker Tom Sennet and proved successful. Special Guest has over 150K active entertainers available for events such as weddings, birthday parties, festivals, corporate events, fundraisers, and much more. Special Guest is available for any entertainer to use, but focuses on helping up-and-coming artists who don’t necessarily have professional representation to get more paying gigs. They take the ambiguity and anxiety out of dealing with clients for entertainers by guaranteeing they receive payment for their talents.
Problem to Solve: How can we help customers discover and hire live entertainers to perform at their special events?
While the Special Guest MVP proved promising, there were many issues with the platform, both server-side and on the customer facing website. I was asked to give Special Guest a major overhaul to improve the UX and UI, focusing primarily on improving artist discovery and booking. The work I did was designed to give Special Guest a strong yet flexible foundation for the work we do moving forward. The next problem we will solve is how to accurately show estimates on entertainers’ prices for the many types of experiences they provide.
My role as lead designer
It was my responsibility to research, create wireframes and prototypes, highfidelity mockups, as well as rebrand/redesign the visual aspects of Special Guest to improve usability and increase customer delight. I worked with CEO Kris Jones and CTO Tom Sennet who acted as Product Managers. I also worked with award-winning, UK-based SEO, web development and digital marketing agency FireCask to plan and execute the scope of the redesign. The duration for design was two months.
Opportunities for Product Improvement
The Special Guest MVP works, but it certainly isn’t easy to use. Below are a series of examples of where UX and UI improvements could be made to help customers easily understand the full value of Special Guest, find the perfect entertainer, and book them for their special event.
Trust the Process!
Design isn’t just the way it looks, right? Let’s think this through to make sure we are building the best customer experience.
Research
Sketches / Wireframes
UX issues
Designs/Prototypes
User testing/Redesign/User testing/Redesign etc.
1. Competitive Research
We have two direct competitors. We wanted to make sure our site was easier to use, more visually appealing, and had our own unique identity and personality.
Aside from our direct competitors, there are many other sites in different markets that we researched to help design the best booking experience for our customers.
2. Sketches/Wireframes
Move fast and make things! Sketches and wireframes are the time to throw stuff at the whiteboard and see what sticks. Once I sketch out the main problem I am trying to solve, I find it faster to start copy and pasting wireframes to block out sections and experiment.
3. Resolving UX Issues
While testing our wireframes we discovered a few UX issues we wanted to improve.
The entertainer profile is a very important page. It is where customers vet and book talent. We wanted to help reduce the amount of time it takes to preview/compare numerous entertainers and we wanted to make sure it was easy to then book the selected entertainer.
We decided the best experience is to have preview videos at the top of the page for easy viewing and to have the booking CTA sticky at the bottom to keep the booking feature top of mind.
4. Design & Prototype
An important part of this project was creating a new design system. The goal was to make the website more modern as well as accessible. We chose purple as our primary color because purple rules and is underrepresented in tech. Special Guest is as unique as the talented entertainers we represent.
5. Test, Design, Repeat
This stage is honestly the best part of the process. Testing interactive prototypes with real people validates hypotheses (or it forces you to think of better solutions) and helps grow the product. Simultaneously, the visual design is evolving and maturing, creating a better experience for the customer. The design system slowly becomes more cohesive and polished as the customer experience becomes streamlined.
Our Solution - Landing Page
We improved discovery by providing prominent, easy to use search features, suggesting relevant entertainers in the customer’s area, and presenting categories visually for easy browsing.
Discovery
The new landing page was designed make searching and browsing easier and to show the wide range of talent available on Special Guest.
The search widget is prominent so that customers can start searching immediately.
The location field is pre-populated with the customer’s geolocation, but can be changed easily.
Geolocation also allows us to show suggestion entertainers in multiple categories that are relevant to the customer.
Search
Search Results
Search suggests categories, subcategories, and tirtiary category suggestions. From any of these levels, it is easy for a customer to find related performers, add search filters, or switch locations.
Entertainer Profile
This is where customers can preview entertainers’ performances and book them to perform live. We made the booking widget sticky, so customers can more easily see the event prices and book an entertainer.
Icons and Illustrations
I designed custom icons and illustrations to give Special Guest a personalized touch. The illustrations speak to the human aspect of live entertainment. They are all hand drawn in procreate. They are not meant to be perfect but to reflect the DIY spirit and energy of independent entertainers.
Thank you for checking out my work!
This project is a work in progress.
Engineering has started as we finish polishing up designs. I can’t wait to see this go live.
Send me an email if you are interested in working with me!