Festivawl Mobile App Development

Festival organizers require a robust mobile app to manage schedules, send timely notifications, and provide essential information, but developing such an app in-house is often too costly and complex. They need a reliable, cost-effective solution that meets all these needs without the burden of building it from scratch.

At the same time, festival-goers require offline access to timetables, the ability to favorite artists, and timely alerts for any updates or changes. Additionally, the hassle of downloading a new app for each festival they attend adds to their frustration and disrupts their experience.

On the organizers' side, we've built an admin panel directly into the app. While developing a web dashboard would have been quicker, we opted to prioritize the in-app admin panel for the MVP phase. This decision aligns with our long-term vision of making mobile management the primary tool for organizers, enabling them to swiftly modify artist schedules or send notifications to attendees directly from the app. A more detailed web dashboard is planned for the future to offer additional control and flexibility.

The current Admin Panel was successfully used by six festival founders, who were able to easily add their lineup, manage set times, and send notifications without any need for tutorial material—highlighting the intuitiveness of the interface. Meanwhile, I, as the founder, have personally added over 60 festivals using the exact same admin panel, demonstrating its reliability and ease of use. Future features for the admin panel will include metrics, transforming it into a "dashboard in your pocket" for festival managers, so they can check their stats at any time, from anywhere.

On the festival-goer side, we prioritized an offline-first approach. After comprehensive research, we discovered that even festivals located in city centers can experience connectivity issues due to the high volume of attendees trying to connect from the same area—especially near the main stage. This insight led us to ensure that all essential features of the app, including the timetable and notifications, were accessible without an internet connection.

The core value of the app lies in its Calendar view, where we utilized a familiar design inspired by popular tools like iCalendar and Google Calendar. This view was designed to be scalable, capable of displaying at least 15 stages in a horizontal scroll. We also developed a smart algorithm that prioritizes stages based on their importance, bringing stages with favorited artists to the forefront. This personalization feature is further enhanced by an "eye" icon that allows users to hide other stages, reducing clutter and making it easier to focus on what’s important to them.

One of the first things we noticed was that people didn’t know how to add favorites for performances that were under 30 minutes because the star icon wasn’t showing up.

Since this is one of our main features, we made a few key changes:

We made the artist’s container bigger so that even short performances had a visible star.

We added a “hold to favorite” feature with haptic feedback so users know when they’ve successfully favorited an artist.

Working directly with festival founders gave me some solid feedback on the lineup page. Just to give you some context, the Lineup Page is designed to look like a festival banner, but everything on it is filled dynamically.

Here’s what we tweaked based on their input:

One festival didn’t want headliners on the lineup page. Since we didn’t have that option, we added it, so now all artists can be fully balanced on the lineup.

Another festival wasn’t happy with how the artist names were weighted. Even though the most important artist appeared first, others below would sometimes show up bigger. We came up with a smart workaround — creating a custom PNG image for the headliners so everything looks balanced. We added a new section in the admin panel for uploading these headliner images.

One festival founder mentioned they’d love to include activities in the calendar, like a hot air balloon ride or a drumming contest. Initially, adding these events would also put them in the lineup, which wasn’t ideal.

So, we added a Kebab menu option in the artist management section, letting organizers change an artist to an “activity,” which removes it from the lineup but keeps it in the calendar.

The whole project was a collaboration between myself and Cipri, a Full Stack Developer who built everything from scratch. I handled the design and product side, while Cipri brought it all to life through development. We worked together to make sure everything came together pixel perfect.

Since our launch in March 2024, Festivawl has quickly gained traction in the festival industry. With over 2384 registered accounts and 5334 downloads, the app has been used at 60 festivals, forming 6 official partnerships along the way. Our users have rated the app 4.7 stars, reflecting its value and usability.