Artist profileLive
The landing surface.
Where the scan arrives. Request a Song is elevated above every competing element, because the guest reading it is on their second drink, in low light, with no patience for a menu.
Prophilehouse · Founding team · 2024 — present
The stage was always the product. We gave it a digital memory.
A real-time interaction layer for live music venues. One QR code on the table connects artist, venue and audience — song requests, acknowledgement, feedback — with no app install and no account. The design work was mostly subtraction: finding the single loop worth proving, and refusing to build anything else until it did.
2Taps, scan to request
0App installs required
3Role-based interfaces
6Steps in the core loop
The problem
Live performance is emotionally rich and digitally invisible.
We interviewed artists, venue operators and audiences. The same pattern kept surfacing: the richest moments of a live set are held in memory alone, and nothing in the room captures them. Every venue had a workaround. None had a system.
01
Song requests are chaotic
Shouting across the room, notes scribbled on napkins, waiters pressed into service as messengers. Whether a request reaches the artist depends entirely on the room.
02
Artist discovery runs on memory
People want to follow the artist they just heard. By the time they're outside, they've lost the name — and there was never a path from the table to the profile.
03
Feedback never makes it back
Applause and table conversation are the real reviews. Neither reaches the artist or the venue in any form they can act on.
04
Venues book on vanity metrics
Follower count is the only signal available when deciding who plays next weekend. Nothing measures what actually happened in the room.
Scoping the MVP
Find the highest-signal interaction. Build only that.
The obvious version of this product is a marketplace — artist discovery, booking, tipping, menus. We asked a narrower question instead: what is the one interaction that, if it works, makes everything else worth building?
The answer
Structured, real-time song requests.
One loop. Attributed to a table. Countable. If audiences don't request and artists don't respond, no amount of adjacent feature work saves the product — and we'd know within a handful of events rather than a year.
Deliberately deferred until engagement is proven
Food ordering
Venue menus
Link-in-bio
Tipping economy
Booking marketplace
Artist discovery feed
The core loop
One loop, six steps, measurable end to end.
The QR code on the table is the entry point and the attribution mechanism at once. It activates only during the live event window, so a scan is always tied to a specific table at a specific performance.
1
Audience scans the QR at their table
No app install, no account. The code is live only during the event window, and the session carries the table it came from.
2
Lands on the artist's live profile
The performing artist is the first screen — identity, context, and one dominant action.
3
Requests a song
Setlist as reference, custom input allowed, optional message. Two taps from landing to submitted.
4
Artist sees requests, grouped
Duplicates bucketed into demand, sorted by table. Built to be read at a glance, mid-set.
5
Artist acknowledges in one tap
No confirmation dialog. The table is notified their request was picked up.
6
Audience leaves feedback
Prompted at session close. Rating plus optional comment, attributed to the performance.
The venue becomes a structured data layer while staying completely invisible to the night.
QR placement was tested for natural sightline from a seated position — the design work started at the table, not the screen.Who we designed for
Three roles. One ecosystem.
The same event looks different from the stage, the office and the table — and the three want incompatible things from the same interface. Separating them into three surfaces was cheaper than compromising on one.
ArtistThe performer
“I want to know what the crowd wants — without breaking my flow.”
- Signal clarity over feature density
- Readable in low light, under pressure
- One glance, one tap — minimal cognitive load
- Acknowledge the room without stopping the set
VenueThe operator
“We need real data to book the right acts. Follower count isn't enough.”
- Objective performance metrics per session
- Engagement data, not just attendance
- Repeat-act quality over social proof
- Setup with no staff training overhead
AudienceThe guest
“I just want to request a song without yelling across the room.”
- Zero friction — no install, no account
- One clear action, visible in dim light
- Wants to feel heard, not to transact
- Casual interaction, not a productivity tool
Designing for live environments
Artists don't have spare attention. We designed for that.
A live set imposes hard constraints — split attention, high sensory load, and no tolerance for a second-guess. A dashboard that has to be read is a dashboard that won't be opened.
Signal clarity over feature density.
The principle every dashboard decision was checked against.- Duplicates bucket into demand. Six requests for the same song read as one row with a count — the artist sees what the room wants, not six lines of noise.
- Requests group by table. Spatial context maps onto what the artist can already see from the stage.
- One-tap acknowledgement, no confirmation. The cost of a misfire is lower than the cost of a dialog mid-song.
- Live interactions toggle off in a single action. The artist can close the loop without leaving the screen.
- High-contrast throughout, tested against actual venue lighting rather than a design tool's preview.
What was built
A role-based system for three worlds.
Five surfaces, each answering to one role and one moment in the loop. Nothing here exists to be comprehensive; each piece earns its place by carrying a step the loop can't skip.
Song request flowLive
Two taps, table-attributed.
Setlist provided as reference with custom input allowed. The confirmation state gives closure so the guest doesn't check back — a small thing that removes a whole category of follow-up.
Artist dashboardLive
Glance and act, not study.
Requests bucketed by song, grouped by table. Toggles for accepting requests, enabling tips and managing the live session — all reachable without leaving the view.
Feedback captureLive
Applause, made attributable.
Prompted at session close. Star rating plus an optional comment, tied to the performance rather than the venue — which is what makes it useful to both.
Session analyticsIn build
The signal venues never had.
Request volume, engagement rate and satisfaction per session. The first objective input a venue can use to decide whether an act comes back.
The product
The audience experience, live.
One screen carries the entire audience side of the loop — identity, request, setlist, gallery, upcoming shows and post-show feedback — in a single scroll, because a guest who has to navigate is a guest who leaves.
The hierarchy was rebuilt after the first live event.
Early feedback showed the Request a Song action was being missed entirely in dim venue lighting — guests scanned, scrolled and left without using the one feature the MVP existed to test.
We rebuilt the screen around a single dominant action, cut competing elements out of the first viewport, and raised contrast until it held up in the room rather than on a desk. The loop only became measurable after that change.
Production screen from the live build.
What's next
This is a working product. The story isn't finished.
The MVP validated the core loop. We're onboarding artists and refining against real event data, with each further layer gated on the one before it earning its place.
Now
In production
Artist onboarding
Reducing time from first sign-up to first live event, based on early-adopter feedback. Targeting 500+ artists.
Next
In build
Tipping and direct support
Layered in only once request engagement holds. Designed to read as appreciation rather than a transaction.
Later
Planned
Venue analytics dashboard
Aggregated performance data across events — the booking signal that replaces follower count.
Exploring
Exploring
Artist–audience connection after the night
A discovery layer letting audiences keep the artists they found live. Unscoped; the loop has to hold first.
We're not replacing the emotion of a live performance. We're capturing the signal it creates — and making it actionable for everyone in the room.
Aditya Meshram · Founding team, product & systemsThe same scoping discipline, at platform scale.
Nineteen product areas of a derivatives platform, held together by one token system.