After completing their purchase, users can choose to receive a physical invitation which serves as a passport to their experience. Peel-able elements maintain the qualities of mystery while a custom qr code ensure’s that moving from one event to another is seamless.

We begin by having a conversation about music, the many ways it affects our lives and the lives of others.

• Patterns- How might a music service adapt to patterns or activities found throughout daily life?

• Culture- How might a music service help explore different cultures?

• Access- How might a music service provide access to lessons or instruction?

• Inclusivity- How might a music service engage other senses to provide a more inclusive experience to all users?

• Environments- How might a might a music service make use of physical environments?

To dive deep into understanding the current audience state, we specifically focus on opera culture. We sent out surveys to learn more about the current audience state, recognizing that the people we were sending the survey out to were probably not regular patrons; This proved true. We learned that very few went of their own volition. Most who have seen an opera enjoyed it. Many people are reluctant to attend due to either false preconceptions about what they’ll experience or hesitation to invest time, money, and coordinative efforts into the unknown.

Q. What was the reason you decided to go in the first place?

A. ”My friend had free tickets and convinced me to go to experience something new that I wouldn't think of doing myself, I fought it the whole time."

Q. What was the most memorable part of your first Opera Experience?

A. ”It was funny, engaging, different than what I had imagined. It wasn't a stuffy /boring performance as I had expected."

Then we presented three scenarios at our speed dating session, considered the feedback questions like:

• Is this service in need?

• Who needs to be involved?

• How to make music compelling to friends?

• Would the user be self-conscious about their voices?

• What other artifacts can be shareable

• How do long-term engage our users?

• Element of fun!

• Lottery scenario, is this about creating mystery and adventure for users?

Moving forward, we pulled together the best parts of our scenarios to create Spectacle. 

Once we had our concept, we spoke with members of the opera community for more direct insight into the challenges they face. We interviewed stakeholders like Music instructors, Pittsburgh Festival Opera Chorus master, Education & Community Programs Directors, and Marketing Directors. Some key takeaways from our conversations are:

• “Within nearly every arts organization, increasing engagement is an issue. Everybody under the sun is trying to figure out the future— whether the current millennials will engage the way the boomers did”

• “If we are not creating programming that resonates with the general public then we have failed. We have to be cognizant about what is actually going on in the community around us.”

• “The challenges we face attracting new audiences tend to be the same challenges for all audiences.”

• “We need to get to a place where the people on the stage and behind the stage reflect the communities they are within”

• Engagement means not just attending an event or performance, "Butts in seats", but rather, any interaction with the organization, including social media interactions.

• As we continue to develop our service, this notion of being able to identify what resonates with the community will be an important consideration. Especially when you consider the role that data will plan when mapping out the opportunities for value exchange.

From there, we shifted our conversations to smaller, more locally-rooted companies. We then realized a solely opera-centric service wouldn’t work because most opera festival seasons have limited runs. Pittsburgh opera has only six mainstage productions of four performances (24 shows) each year. Hawaii opera theatre only has 12 shows. At this point, we pivoted our solution from being modeled as a service for opera, to encompassing all of the institutions of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, including the symphony, ballet, and concert series.

Following our exploratory research we turned to evaluative methods to gain a better understanding of who our target user may be as well as to uncover usability concerns in our initial wireframes.

How comfortable are people with sharing certain information? How does that relate to critical information we need to collect to make our product run smoothly?

• How much transparency should we provide over how the packages are coming together?