Helped Pohoda visitors plan their day and find their way.
Pohoda is a music and arts festival in Slovakia. For its visitors, the experience involves a constant series of small decisions: which performance to see, where to go next, where friends are and whether anything has changed.
Outloud designed and built a festival app that brings those decisions into one place, alongside the content tools used by the organisers. Our work covered discovery, product design, mobile and platform development, testing and launch support.
Gave organisers a direct way to keep festival visitors informed.
The project’s reported adoption shows how widely the app became part of the festival experience. Visitors can plan a day, check the map and receive updates in one place. Organisers have a direct communication channel as the event unfolds, rather than relying only on information published in advance.
Made the next festival decision easier on the move.
A festival app is used differently from software at a desk. People check it while walking, meeting friends or deciding between performances. The interface needs to make a useful answer easy to find when attention is limited.
We organised the mobile app around those recurring visitor needs, from choosing performances before arrival to finding a stage on site. The visual design carries Pohoda’s identity, while navigation keeps the practical information close.
Kept the programme, friends and festival services close at hand.
- Build a personal programme. Visitors can explore performances and keep their own selection close at hand.
- Find stages and services. A map connects the programme to the physical festival grounds.
- Find friends. Location features help people reconnect on site.
- Check practical information. Festival details and services sit alongside the programme.
- Receive news and changes. Notifications give the organisers a direct route to visitors who opt in.
- Manage the guide behind the scenes. The festival team can maintain content, schedules and updates as the event develops.
Let organisers manage schedules and updates in one place.
Our work extended beyond the visitor’s phone. We built the administration interface and backend that support the content, schedules and notifications. This gave the festival team a way to manage the guide during the event, when information could still be changing.
The two sides serve different needs. Visitors want a quick answer about what is happening next. Organisers need to maintain that information and communicate changes. Designing and building both meant we could consider how an update reaches the audience, as well as how it looks once it arrives.
The mobile app uses Flutter, while the supporting platform uses TypeScript, Node.js and Vue. That division gives the visitor interface and the administration tools their own place in the product, connected through the backend and festival data.
Kept the visitor guide aligned with programme changes.
The visitor interface is only useful when the information behind it is current. We connected the app to Pohoda’s existing programme and content data, alongside the platform tools supporting the mobile experience.
Different kinds of information behaved differently. Programme changes were supplied as a complete replacement, while other content exposed individual updates and deletions. The integration needed to respect those differences so that a changed schedule was reflected in the app as a coherent programme.
This is a practical example of connecting existing systems: the important work is understanding how information changes, not only making the first transfer succeed. For the festival team, it supports a visitor guide that can change with the event.
Caught confusing moments before visitors reach the festival.
We built the mobile app in Flutter, with a backend and administration interface supporting content and live features. Testing focused on the journeys that matter during the festival: navigating the programme, selecting performances, finding places and receiving information.
The delivery feedback also covered details that are easy to miss in a static design: long lists, smaller phone screens, location permissions, search results and the handling of events after midnight. These checks helped the team examine how the product behaved in situations beyond the ideal first screen.
After-midnight performances were a good example. A concert at 2 a.m. belongs to the next calendar date, but a visitor may still think of it as part of the previous evening’s programme. The delivery feedback raised that exact issue. Reviewing the schedule through a festival visitor’s eyes exposed a question that a technically correct date alone could not answer.
Location permissions were another important test area. The team examined what happened when someone allowed, denied or skipped access, and how that affected onboarding and the map. These checks focused on the choices people actually make on their phones, including when they do not follow the expected path.
We treated the app and the organisers’ tools as one product. A better visitor experience depends on both: information needs to be easy to use and practical for the team to maintain.
“The guys from Outloud were very proactive, and the final result met our expectations. Communication was fast, and best of all, the app helped thousands of our visitors. Recommended!”
Gabriel Sebő, Head of Catering, Pohoda
For Pohoda, the outcome was a practical connection between running the festival and experiencing it. Visitors have a guide in their pocket; organisers have a way to keep that guide useful as the day changes. Explore the Pohoda visual case study for more of the product.
