UNFINISHED: Giving an online festival a place to gather
A festival needed more than a video stream
When the pandemic moved UNFINISHED online in 2020, the organisers wanted to preserve the connection between talks, art and informal conversations.
I led and executed the platform design, working with the festival founders, creative team and Sessions engineers. We designed around three parts of attending a festival: finding somewhere to go, sharing an event with others and meeting people between sessions.
Make the venue a way to navigate
The founders proposed a virtual map based on the physical venue. I developed it into the main navigation, connecting different spaces to the festival’s talks, workshops and art.
The interface stayed quiet around the map so the venue and programme could guide exploration. I worked with engineers to translate the layered artwork into an interactive layout across screen sizes.
Let people see the audience
The live-event page paired the speaker’s video with an audience view. Real-time reactions let attendees respond during the talk, and people could see who was watching the same content.
That made the audience part of the interface. The design carried the idea of entering a room from the venue map into the event itself.
Create room for chance conversations
Talks alone would leave out much of the social experience. A networking room let attendees join spontaneous video conversations with up to three other people.
Onboarding also asked for a selfie, giving participants a recognisable face throughout the festival. Together, the map, audience view and small-group rooms translated different social moments into distinct interactions. The work was delivered through close collaboration with the organisers and engineering team.
