Solo project initiated during my UX studies and informed by my professional work as a musician.
My Responsibilities - Research, persona creation, competitor analysis, ideation, user flow design, wireframing, branding, and future prototype planning.
Overview
I designed the MEO Gig Tracker app to ease the admin load on self-employed musicians. It brings gig tracking, invoicing, and tax prep together in one place, tailored to the real workflows of performers
User Problem:
Gigging musicians often face scattered records, forgotten payments, and unclear income, with tax preparation left to daunting year-end piles of receipts and little guidance for the newly self-employed. Despite earning good money per hour, many struggle to present themselves as financially credible when applying for bigger steps like a mortgage, leaving admin overwhelming and distracting from their music.
Outcomes (anticipated):
A purpose-built product prototype.
A validated problem space via 8 musician interviews.
Early wireframes and personas prepared for usability testing.
Strong positioning as a future niche product with subscription potential.
Product Vision:
To provide a digital toolkit that empowers musicians to feel confident as self-employed professionals, reducing admin stress and enabling them to focus more on performance and creativity.
Following a Design Thinking Process
Empathise
Discovery and Ideation
Musicians need simplicity: any tool must be frictionless, or it won’t be adopted.
Consistency matters: Musicians craved visibility into recurring income to feel stability.
A major financial literacy gap exists: most felt unprepared for tax.
Many desired independence from agencies and wanted control over their own career tools.
This led to the product vision: a one-stop toolkit for musicians’ professional and creative needs.
Idea Prioritisation
Must-have: Gig logging, automated invoices, payment tracking.
Should-have: Expense logging with receipt scanning, tax-ready reports.
Could-have: Shareable musician profile (availability, media, song list).
Won’t-have (yet): Advanced integrations like live voting displays — future scope once core product adoption is validated.
Prototyping
Created core wireframes for gig entry, invoice generation, and financial overview.
Designed flows for both financial and audience-facing features (QR song requests, shareable profile).
Early branding explored positioning musicians as empowered “self-employed professionals.”
Usability testing of wireframes with participants is the next step.
Outcomes
User Impact (anticipated): A tool that simplifies admin and reduces financial anxiety for musicians.
Business Impact (future): Potential subscription model with free + premium tiers. Premium features could include advanced insights, deep record exports, and proof-of-income PDFs for tax and loans.
Professional Growth: Learned how to design for real-time, high-pressure environments where technology must reduce stress rather than add it.
Reflection
With more time and resource I will:
Conduct usability testing with wireframes and iterate further.
Build a high-fidelity prototype to validate flows.
Explore launch potential and market demand for MEO as my first live app.
