Lively, founded in 2012, was a music startup and mobile app that transformed how fans experienced live performances. The platform allowed users to stream and download high-quality live concerts, offering exclusive content and a new way for artists to connect with their audience. As Co-Founder and Head of Product Design, I led the design and user experience of the app, focusing on creating an intuitive, engaging interface for both fans and musicians. By capturing live shows and making them accessible anytime, Lively provided an immersive music experience while giving artists an additional revenue stream.

Problem

In 2012, the live music industry lacked a dedicated way to preserve and share the magic of concerts in a digital-first world.

  • Fans had no simple way to relive live concerts — only scattered YouTube clips, low-quality bootlegs, or delayed DVD releases.

  • Artists struggled to monetize performances beyond ticket sales and to build meaningful connections with fans between shows.

  • The music industry was still driven by iTunes downloads, with early streaming services like Spotify (U.S. launch in 2011) and Pandora gaining traction — but no platform existed for premium, on-demand live concert experiences.

  • This gap left room for a solution that could bridge the stage and the screen, delivering high-fidelity recordings while deepening artist-fan engagement.

Solution

To address the gap between live concert experiences and digital access, Lively partnered with artists and venues to record high-quality audio and video of live performances. We assembled a specialized team of audio and video experts to ensure exceptional production quality. I led the design of a mobile application that allowed concert-goers to directly purchase, download, and play live content, creating an easy, seamless way for fans to relive their favorite performances while providing artists with an additional revenue stream.

Key Elements:

  • Enjoy on-demand, high-quality audio and video of concerts—made available within hours—so they can relive the moment without low-quality bootlegs or shaky phone recordings.

    • Opened a new, direct monetization channel—artists were paid for their content, with revenue-sharing contracts in place through their labels, including major industry players such as Universal Records.

    • Removed technical and logistical barriers to selling high-fidelity live content directly to fans.

  • Utilized the Lively Audio Manager — an in-house tool for Lively’s sound engineers to capture pristine, multi-track audio directly from the venue’s soundboard. This ensured every video had broadcast-quality sound and could be turned around quickly.

  • Created a scalable distribution model for premium live concert content, bridging the gap between physical/digital album sales and the early wave of streaming services.

  • Fostered deeper engagement through behind-the-scenes content, exclusive releases, and immediate access to live moments—bridging the stage and the screen.

Research

I led a multi-pronged research effort to ground the Lively mobile app in both user needs and market opportunities:

  • Industry immersion: Investigated the live music ecosystem to understand fan–artist dynamics, revenue streams, and shifting digital behaviors.

  • Behavioral observation: Analyzed fan behavior at concerts—capturing motivations behind phone usage, purchasing decisions, and post-show engagement.

  • Competitive benchmarking: Evaluated leading music, streaming, and media apps to assess UX patterns, feature gaps, and monetization models.

  • Experience deconstruction: Dissected high-performing flows to identify transferable best practices and avoid friction points.

  • Brand and visual audit: Reviewed brand guidelines from top tech and entertainment companies to inform a design system aligned with music culture and scalability needs.

  • Synthesis into design principles: Translated findings into principles guiding feature prioritization, UX, and visual identity.

Key Findings

The research uncovered a set of core insights that shaped the product strategy and design direction for the Lively mobile app:

  • Emotional value drives loyalty: Fans are motivated to purchase and engage when the experience feels like an authentic extension of the live show.

  • Instant gratification matters: Interest in live recordings drops sharply after 24–48 hours; speed-to-market is essential for sales.

  • Mobile-first purchasing is critical: Fans prefer buying and accessing recordings directly on their phones rather than through desktop or third-party platforms.

  • Contextual discovery increases engagement: Fans are more likely to buy when content is surfaced alongside setlists, tour dates, and social context from the show they attended.

  • Friction kills conversions: Even minor barriers—extra logins, unclear pricing—significantly reduce purchase completion rates.

  • Brand consistency builds trust: A cohesive visual identity across app, web, and marketing materials increases perceived legitimacy and willingness to purchase.

Early Concept Sketches

Before moving into digital wireframes, I began with low-fidelity hand sketches to quickly explore feature ideas, user flows, and screen layouts for the Lively mobile app. This stage allowed me to:

  • Rapidly iterate on multiple navigation structures and playback flows without the constraints of high-fidelity tools.

  • Experiment with how core features—artist lists, track purchasing, playback controls—could be organized for minimal cognitive load.

  • Visualize interactions like setlist browsing, show-specific downloads, and onboarding in a way that made dependencies clear for development.

  • Identify early alignment opportunities between the app’s brand identity and its functional UI components.

These sketches acted as a collaborative tool—easy to share, annotate, and adjust during conversations with stakeholders—ensuring that the final wireframes were grounded in both business goals and user needs.

Wireframing

After refining the flows and layouts through sketches, I transitioned into creating high-fidelity wireframes. This step allowed me to validate the structure, navigation, and feature placement.

  • Translating concepts to screens: Mapped the hand-sketched ideas into a consistent digital framework, ensuring clarity in hierarchy and interaction patterns.

  • Defining core flows: Built out end-to-end user journeys, from onboarding and browsing artists to purchasing and downloading live sets.

  • Navigation clarity: Established a simple, predictable navigation structure to make switching between artists, shows, audio, and video content intuitive.

  • Content organization: Grouped recordings by artist and show, with clear distinctions between audio and video tabs to reduce cognitive load.

  • Purchase and playback integration: Incorporated seamless in-line purchasing alongside streaming and download options to maximize conversion potential.

  • Scalable design foundation: Created layouts and interaction patterns that could adapt easily to future features, branding, and platform needs.

Brand Identity

Logo Exploration

I explored a wide range of logo concepts through fast, iterative hand sketches, focusing on visual identity elements that could capture the energy of live music:

  • Microphone integration: Experimented with replacing the “i” in Lively with a microphone icon to create an immediate association with performance.

  • Typography variations: Tested different weights, cases, and styles—from bold block lettering to more fluid, hand-drawn type—to explore tone and personality.

  • Stage & equipment motifs: Incorporated amps, speaker grids, and cables into the lettering to ground the brand in live concert culture.

  • Symbol + wordmark hybrids: Explored layouts where text and imagery could be used together or independently for flexible branding.

  • Contrast & readability checks: Sketched with high-contrast fills and outlines to ensure the mark would remain clear across print, merchandise, and digital applications.

  • Playful arrangement tests: Rotated and scaled letterforms, adjusted kerning, and explored vertical/horizontal lockups to see how the brand could adapt to different placements.

Final Logo & Color Scheme

Final Logo & Color Scheme
The final Lively logo integrates a stylized turquoise microphone as the “i,” creating an instant connection to live performance while keeping the mark simple, modern, and highly recognizable. The typography is clean and geometric, chosen for its clarity at both small digital sizes and large-scale event signage.

The color palette is intentionally minimal to ensure flexibility across mediums:

  • Primary Accent – Turquoise (#27C2C9): Vibrant and energetic, it stands out against dark backgrounds while evoking freshness and creativity.

  • Primary Neutral – Black (#000000): Used for text and high-contrast elements, grounding the visual identity.

  • Secondary Neutral – White (#FFFFFF): Ensures legibility in reverse applications and balances the boldness of the turquoise.

Press & Recognition

Lively’s launch and growth earned significant media attention, industry credibility, and civic recognition.

Media Highlights & Quotes

App of the Week – GeekWire:

Funding & growth milestones:

  • “Live music app Lively entertains acquisition offers, pushes funding.”
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  • “Live concert service Lively sings new tune with $2M fresh funding.”
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Cultural coverage:

  • “Mayor McGinn spends final campaign hours hanging with tech community.”
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  • “Each live show is a unique experience — we wanted a better way to capture it.”
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The Seattle Times feature: