Happenings is an event-based social media sharing application, with both web and mobile prototypes developed at Yahoo! Research Berkeley. We aimed to provide users with a rich online and mobile experience around preparing for, coordinating, attending, documenting, capturing, reliving and sharing moments and events with their friends, family, and fellow attendees. We focused specifically on concerts and live music events, as there was already a particularly active online community and contributors.
The prototypes were created after an in-depth user study which consisted of surveys and two sets of 30 and 60 minute interviews with concert goers and media makers. The prototype was additionally evaluated with a focus group and participatory design exercises.
The web prototype allows people to browse, view, upload, download, search, email music, videos, and audio for a given performer at a given venue or concert in a variety of ways. It has four major visualizations - one a recognizable grid view (by content type), a timeline view (by time, setlist, performers, or upload activity level), a spatial view (location within the venue), and a social view (friends, fellow concertgoers, or users with similar tastes).
The mobile prototype leveraged the Zonetag and Zurfer prototypes developed at Y!RB. It allows concert-goers with a compatible mobile phone to immediately upload their photos to the web application with the time and location data, share text updates, mark moments in time, and send out time-based markers ("I love this song") with their friends or the entire Happenings community.
