Jay: festival assistant — from the need to the prototype application
In 2024, FestivAll changed its name and is now called: “Jay: festival assistant”.
In the world of music festivals, there’s one common denominator: the line-up.
To showcase their programming, festivals post it on their site, in their mobile app and on social networks, with a preference for Instagram.
Not all festivals have their own mobile application, but the recent arrival of the French start-up Fragolabs seems to be gradually addressing this problem by offering a simple and effective application for a festival to display all information relating to the event: line-up, news, cashless, map, etc…
From the festival-goer’s point of view, by installing the application they can keep abreast of all festival news and select the concerts they wish to see from the program.
Once they’ve made their selection, they can consult their favorites to find out the times and stages of each concert.
It was with this app in our pockets that my wife and I wandered around festivals for the 1st time: Les Escales 2018 in Saint-Nazaire (in France) and Hellfest 2019 in Clisson Rock City (also in France).
Who are we?
Behind the Jay: festival assistant app, there’s a couple: Florence and Gildas (myself) and their band of loyal friends, always ready to test their latest personal project (usually an application or website).
Florence is a graphic designer by training, and has alternated between being a salaried employee and an entrepreneur. She’s also very active and committed to community work, especially for women.
As for me, I trained as a website and mobile application developer and I’m currently working in the video game industry.
Let’s keep the CV part short, because we’re not going to lie, we don’t really care, but it’s simply to introduce the fact that the graphic designer + developer combo offers some interesting creative possibilities.
Back to the subject at hand: our first festivals and what we thought of them.
Being a festival-goer
I don’t know if you’ve experienced it in the same way, but at a festival everything happens very quickly.
Carried away by the music, the encounters and the alcoholic (or non-alcoholic) beverages, it’s easy to take immense pleasure in wandering around, discovering and making the most of this interlude in our daily lives. It’s like a mini vacation away from the world: no constraints, no responsibilities, just fun and happiness.
From a musical point of view, a festival like Hellfest, Les Vieilles Charrues or Rock en Seine is above all about seeing your favorite artists.
It’s also about discovering new artists and witnessing surprising, even incredible live performances. Discoveries can be made by chance, by camping out in front of the stage to make sure you’re well placed for the next concert, or by recommendations from friends.
Sometimes we’d like to discover a band before the festival, to get to know their songs and albums better and enjoy seeing them live even more.
Perhaps you and/or your friends use an excel spreadsheet or similar document to prepare for the event, so that you can share your tastes and listen to the bands before the festival on YouTube Music, Spotify or Deezer.
Do you see what I’m getting at?
In addition to the musical aspect of the event, there’s also the possibility — indeed the necessity — of preparing and making discoveries that will broaden your musical horizons.
And for that, the official festival app isn’t much help.
Sure, it lets you select bands and listen to them one by one to get an idea, but you can’t :
- share your selection with your friends
- see the concerts they have selected
- create a complete playlist of your selection
- be notified if you have selected 2 concerts taking place at the same time (conflict)
- see how much free time you’ll have between concerts to organize your dining and shopping arrangements
The starting point
And that’s where we started thinking about creating a simple 3-screen application:
- The festival running order
- My planning
- My friends
After preparing our 1st Hellfest, in 2019, with an excel spreadsheet, we let the 2 years of COVID pass and made a prototype application to test the idea during the double edition of Hellfest 2022.
In this first version: there’s only one festival and all users are hard-coded (impossible to create an account). The users in question were our friends.
The festival program lets you select concerts and see your friends’ photos at each concert they’ve selected. This simple piece of information allows us to react in the following way: “I don’t know this band, but if my friends are going it must be good, so I’ll check it off too and listen to the band to find out”.
My schedule shows my free time, conflicts (2 selected concerts taking place at the same time) and the photo of friends who have selected the same concert.
Finally, for the duration of the festival, a banner (On Air banner) appears at the bottom of the page to indicate which concert is currently on our schedule and how much time is left until the end.
The verdict at the end of the festival
In 2022, Hellfest took place over 2 weekends: the first of 3 days and the second of 4 days.
So it was during this 7-day festival that we were able to test our prototype with a group of around 7 friends.
The feedback was very positive:
- The view of the schedule with the display of free time was appreciated, in particular for planning times for eating out and shopping.
- The “On Air” banner optimized travel and allowed us to get the most out of each group.
- The presence of friends on the app has enabled some to discover bands and follow each other between concerts.
We also had many suggestions for new features:
- Add a “Time table” view to the list of concerts, for a better overview of the program.
- A what’s app chat to facilitate exchanges with friends and share photos
- Festival map with friends’ locations
- Make the application work offline to avoid the vagaries of the network
- etc…
So it was with a substantial to-do list that we left Clisson, and above all with the satisfaction of having been able to interest our friends in our project. The feedback we received suggests that there is a need here that is not being met by the applications offered by festivals, and that our project has potential.
Just over a year later, we’ve come a long way and published the app on the App Store and Google Play:
…but let me tell you all about it in a later article.
