The Problem
If you're a musician just starting out, there's no way to prove you're reliable to someone who's never worked with you. You can't point to a track record. You depend on someone vouching for you. And if you don't know the right people yet, you're stuck.
Reputation in classical music is everything. But nobody can actually check it.
apps exist, none give musicians a verified track record
apps let musicians build credibility from real attendance data
connection can make or break a musician's career
Research
I visited MUK Vienna and asked students how they find work. Almost all said the same thing, it depends on who you know. Not how good you are. Who you know. Some were spending hours every day just trying to find opportunities, refreshing the same websites, waiting for someone to pass their name.
I also spoke with event organizers to understand the other side, but that part of the app is still in research. For now, this case study is about the musician's experience.
On top of that I reviewed 15+ existing apps to see what's already out there, and what's always missing.
Almost every musician said the same thing: “It’s not about how good you are. It’s about who already knows you.”
Branding & Visual Direction
Overture is the music before the show, the moment everything comes together before the curtain rises. That felt exactly right for an app that connects people before the performance happens.
Font
Satoshi. Clean and easy to read at any age.
Colours
Inspired by Vienna. Navy from the Staatsoper, cream from Schönbrunn, gold from the Musikverein, teal from the Palace gardens.
Research showed musicians are sensitive to colour, loud palettes feel stressful. Everything here was chosen to feel calm.
Information Architecture
Here's something that seems obvious once you hear it: a one-off gig and a big production are completely different commitments. A gig might be one rehearsal and one performance. An opera has weeks of rehearsals and multiple shows. They can't live in the same list.
If you mix them together, the reliability score becomes meaningless. A musician who did 20 tiny gigs looks the same as one who committed to a full season and that's just not true.
So I created two things. A Project is the full commitment it can be anything from a single gig to a six-month production. Events are everything that happens inside it, each rehearsal, each performance. One project, many events.
It took several rounds of testing to get this across clearly. But once it clicked for users, everything else made sense.
100%
task completion in testing
2
critical issues found and fixed
7
MUK students tested the app in person
Navigation
Home · Projects · Events · Profile · Discover
After testing I added colour, green for active projects, gold for frequent collaborators, grey for past work. A test participant suggested it.
Design Process
After going through all those platforms, the same gap kept showing up, musicians had no way to prove how reliable they are, and no smart way to get in front of the right opportunities. Those two gaps became the two scores.
Every decision I made was checked against one question: would this actually help Sofia, a great clarinetist with no connections get hired and show she can be trusted?
SOLUTION
The core idea was simple: instead of asking people to trust a musician based on a written review or a personal recommendation, let the data speak. Every time a musician shows up, confirms attendance, or cancels the app records it. Over time, that builds into something real a reliability score that nobody can fake, manipulate, or write their way out of.
That score lives at the top of every musician's profile. It's the first thing anyone sees. A musician who completed 30 of 50 gigs on time, was late to 10, and cancelled the other 10 will have a lower score than someone with a clean record and that difference is visible immediately, without anyone having to say a word about it.
But reliability alone doesn't tell the full story. A musician can be incredibly dependable and still be the wrong fit for a specific gig. So alongside the reliability score, there's a match score calculated from availability, location, repertoire, and instrument. The better the fit, the higher you rank for that opportunity. The right gigs start finding you, instead of the other way around.
The home screen keeps things focused invitations waiting on you, confirmations to send, nothing buried. And when searching for opportunities, direct invitations always come first. Someone reached out specifically that's urgent and it should feel that way.
Before applying, musicians can also see who's behind the gig, the organizer's profile, their past projects, their track record. It goes both ways.
The organizer side of the app, how they post gigs, manage bookings, and track their own history, is currently in development. The foundation is there. That part of the story is still being written.
TESTING
Three MUK students tested in person, three tasks, seven screens. Everyone got through everything. But when I looked closer, two real problems were hiding in plain sight.
Task 01
Accept an invitation, then confirm attendance for an event inside that project.
Task 02
Find a missed rehearsal and upload a note about it.
Task 03
Explain both scores in your own words.
FIX IMMEDIATELY
Project disappeared after accepting Nobody saw the confirmation message. Fix: go straight to the project page.
Projects vs Events was confusing
Fix: added colour and a short explanation on first use.
HIGH PRIORITY
Missed rehearsals hard to spot
Fix: red dot on absences.
Too many notifications
Fix: only highlight what's truly urgent.
MEDIUM PRIORITY
How is this score calculated? — Fix: small info button on the score.
Score you can trust
Built from real attendance data. Every gig, every rehearsal, every cancellation counts.
Right fit, not just available
Match score means you show up where you actually fit, not just anywhere there's an opening.
Fair for both sides
New to the scene or not, your profile speaks for you.
Currently seeking
Collaborators & co-founders · Classical music industry partners · Beta testers from Vienna music scene
Learnings
One score wasn't enough
Reliability and fit are different things. Combining them into one number made both useless.
Finishing doesn't mean understanding
Everyone got through the flows. Two people were still confused about the basics. I almost missed it.
The best idea came from a participant
The colour system that makes everything clear? A participant suggested it mid-session. I just wrote it down.
Obvious to me, confusing to everyone else
Projects vs Events was obvious to me. Nobody else saw it that way at first. It took iteration.
With Stitch, describe the feeling
Short, evocative prompts always got better results than long detailed specs.
I learned that making something feel trustworthy is just as hard as making it easy to use. People can figure out how your app works, but if they don’t believe what it’s telling them, none of that matters.
Get in touch
Have a project in mind? I’d love to hear about it. Fill in the form and I’ll get back to you.