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Design for AIDesigning an Intuitive UX for Operabase’s Global Arts Community
Operabase is a global digital platform at the heart of the performing arts industry—connecting performers, directors, companies, and agents across 34+ languages. It powers everything from talent discovery and season planning to casting and performance tracking, all within one unified interface.
Our goal was to create a seamless, intuitive casting experience that empowers a highly diverse set of users—from performers and agents to artistic directors—to plan, search, and make casting decisions with clarity and confidence. This meant addressing vastly different mental models, simplifying complex performance data, and ensuring flawless functionality in high-stakes workflows.
The tool had to support 30+ languages, adapt to varied regional practices, and feel cohesive across every user journey. With Operabase constantly expanding into new genres and markets, our design approach needed to remain flexible, scalable, and precise—every interaction mattered, and every update pushed us to solve for complexity without compromise.
For over 6 years, we’ve partnered with Operabase to design and evolve their flagship Casting Tool—a mission-critical product that brings structure to an industry defined by diversity, nuance, and constantly shifting workflows.
Our goal was to create a seamless, intuitive casting experience that empowers a highly diverse set of users—from performers and agents to artistic directors—to plan, search, and make casting decisions with clarity and confidence. This meant addressing vastly different mental models, simplifying complex performance data, and ensuring flawless functionality in high-stakes workflows.
The tool had to support 30+ languages, adapt to varied regional practices, and feel cohesive across every user journey. With Operabase constantly expanding into new genres and markets, our design approach needed to remain flexible, scalable, and precise—every interaction mattered, and every update pushed us to solve for complexity without compromise.
For over 6 years, we’ve partnered with Operabase to design and evolve their flagship Casting Tool—a mission-critical product that brings structure to an industry defined by diversity, nuance, and constantly shifting workflows.
Objective of Design
Our design for Operabase’s casting tool was grounded in clarity, precision, and user adaptability. We aimed to:
- Create a seamless casting experience that works for multiple types of users with highly specific workflows.
- Develop a scalable system that supports multilingual access and evolving use cases.
- Translate complex performance data into intuitive visual formats.
- Maintain high-fidelity design implementation in close sync with development for clean, consistent rollouts.
- Continuously refine the experience in sync with new genres, global expansion, and stakeholder feedback.
Our Process
Pain Points
User Pain Points: Performing arts professionals often face fragmented tools, scattered data, and inconsistent workflows, making it difficult to plan, cast, and collaborate with confidence.
Business Perspective: Managing multilingual complexity, ensuring high-accuracy design implementation, and adapting to evolving product demands at scale.
Discovery
Stakeholder Interviews & Customer Calls: We engaged performers, directors, agents, and staff to map varied mental models and workflows across the industry.
Use Case Mapping: Documented 12+ real-world workflows from global opera companies to surface friction points and functional gaps.
Behavioral Insights: Leveraged Google Analytics, session recordings, and heatmaps to validate assumptions and optimize user journeys.
Competitor Analysis: While manual tools exist, Operabase remains the only dedicated digital casting platform—setting the industry benchmark.
Implementation
UI Implementation Integrity: Worked closely with developers to ensure every component was executed as designed.
Complex Data Visualization: Crafted visual systems that made performance metrics, artist profiles, and season plans readable and actionable.
Clean & Cohesive Interface: Designed a unified design language across casting, planning, and talent discovery modules.
Localization Ready: Ensured all layouts, content structures, and interactions could adapt fluidly to 30+ languages.
Design QA Loops: Introduced ongoing design review processes to ensure nothing got lost in translation between design and build.
Outcomes
Outcomes
Our team approached Operabase’s product with a deep respect for the art and a rigorous commitment to design excellence. From defining critical workflows to achieving detail-oriented design delivery, our approach balanced flexibility with structure. The casting tool today powers decision-making at some of the world’s top opera houses—serving professionals with clarity, reliability, and elegance.
Crafting for Complexity: Operabase’s Ongoing Evolution
Crafting for Complexity: Operabase’s Ongoing Evolution
- What began as a casting tool has become a cornerstone of Operabase’s ecosystem—scaling across genres, user types, and global markets. Each phase of this journey has challenged and sharpened our design thinking, from supporting niche workflows to building dynamic, multilingual experiences. Our collaboration continues to evolve with the platform, proving that thoughtful, scalable UX thrives in complex digital environments. Operabase stands as a testament to what long-term, collaborative design partnerships can unlock—where every detail contributes to something bigger: enabling the global performing arts community to connect, cast, and create with confidence.
Impact
Business Impact
- Defined a New Category Standard: Our design helped establish Operabase as the first dedicated digital casting platform—moving users away from fragmented, manual tools.
- Enabled Scalable Growth: A modular, flexible design system supported Operabase’s expansion across regions, genres, and user types.
- Strengthened Product-Dev Alignment: Precision in design handoff reduced QA cycles and ensured seamless implementation across a complex product ecosystem.
User Impact
- Simplified Complex Workflows: Our user-first design translated intricate casting processes into intuitive, task-driven flows enabling directors and companies to plan and cast with clarity and speed.
- Expanded Global Accessibility: By designing a multilingual, context-aware interface, we made the platform usable across 30+ languages—ensuring consistent experience regardless of region or role.
- Adoption Through Trust: By solving for real-world mental models, the casting tool became a trusted part of their day-to-day operations.
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