What Features Do You Wish The Coachella App Had?

[RotationSlimWang]

As a social media nerd, I'm curious to hear people's thoughts about the app from last year. I didn't use it much myself as I was on a junky POS phone. What were the experiences? Did it work? What features do you think would be useful that it didn't have?

[ameeps]

Honestly, the current app is trash. Coachella should just do what Outside Lands/Ezoo/Treasure Island/Hangout/every other smart music fest does and get their own skinned version of FestApp.
http://www.aloompa.com/portfolio/festival-apps
I've used it for Outside Lands and it's so much more stable and user friendly and the features actually work.

[RotationSlimWang]

Let's try and think beyond that though, because there really is a lot more that could be done.

What about all the people you meet through a weekend of Coachella? Since we all have usernames and accounts with Coachella through this board and for our ticket purchasing, what would you think about a feature where you could easily "friend" the people you meet briefly throughout the week, say like something through NFC so that you would just have to bring your devices near each other to save each other as friends to catch up with later.

[HumanRobot74x]

No built in map, poor layout of schedule and a lack of any useful information made it pretty worthless for 2012. While the built in social media is cool and all, they focused on it way too much at the expense of better and more useful features(are people really checking Coachella's youtube channel while in the festival?). The app should make the booklet obsolete and not vice versa. I used the app program mentioned above for Outside Lands and it had some awesome features that Coachella needs to adopt. Groupme, an interactive map and a sortable schedule should be no brainers going forward. Even if its not as complete as the festapp it should be some form of interactive booklet and not just a page of links.

[HumanRobot74x]

I realize now you're trying to think super innovative so I aplogize for the boring ideas. However the 2012 app was literally so bad that the most basic ideas are huge improvements.

[RotationSlimWang]

Right, complaints well received but I'm actually more interested in could the Coachella app do for us that those other apps still aren't. Like the thing I mentioned above, though now that I'm realizing NFC is not available on iPhone 5, perhaps bluetooth is the way to go? You meet somebody at Coachella, strike up a promising conversation, want to get together again later, flip on a Friend Finder kinda thing that looks in your area for other people with their app open and finds all the names of other users in the area. You each tell the other which name on their list you are, mark that name as a Friend, and then get the ability to chat with them through the app while you're there. Also, if you're just hanging out somewhere alone and feel your phone vibrate and pull it out to find a notification that one of your Coachella Friends is nearby. "RotationSlimWang is nearby!"

[HumanRobot74x]

Last year they allowed you to link your fb to your coachooser so being able to go through a list of your facebook friends and have the artist they are seeing next to the name would be a nice, simple feature.
Another idea would be a way to live rank artists. It would be a map of the 5 stages and people could look at the stage with the name of the artist playing and a constantly updated rank from 1- 10. The idea being if you are at a crap performance or just wandering around aimlessly you could look at the map and see if there is an artist who is getting incredible ratings and check them out. Gary Clarke comes to mind as someone who was relatively unknown but had the entire campgorunds buzzing afterwards. I heard about from a friend through text and it was already over half way into his set by the time I got there. This way you'd never miss a good performance for no reason because you could keep tabs on things that are generating buzz.

[RotationSlimWang]

That would be nice but the data issues at the polo fields I think make that stuff kinda tricky. Like last year the app was constantly updating, right? I thank that might've been due to trying to load updates to the app on Friday or Saturday and your phone had to try to then pull down a whole new copy of itself to get the new information.

[RotationSlimWang]

Anybody else wanna weigh in?

[gaypalmsprings]

I gave up on the app. Any improvements would be good. It should have a gay GPS system so I can find a date.

[bobert]

This is more of a suggestion for improving the Coachooser but could be integrated into the app as well. When you fill out your Coachooser and list all of the artists that interest you, what if these choices were automatically compared to the selections of every other festival attendee, and when the set times are released Coachella provides you with a list of recommended artists that are playing during any gaps in your personal schedule. Say you have an hour to kill in between sets from Martin Solveig and David Guetta. The Coachooser could compare your selections to thousands of other festival goers with similarly appalling taste in music, and suggest that you stay put in the Sahara for Sebastian Ingrosso at 7:30.

[Fig Neutron]

A map that showed who is on each stage at any time, and you could change the time and the acts would update on the map.

[Aphxtwinin]

just some ideas....make the app the ticket, only way to access app is to go to the festival. Once the digital ticket is activated the app basically acts like the booklet except instead of pictures there would be video whenever appropriate. Like the artwork page or artist page could have 30s snippets of what the art piece does or maybe some background info on the artist etc...the app would be linked with this forum and all your board friends will automatically show up on the app with their location at the festival and their coachooser (assuming your friends dl the app). Throughout the festival there could be a page of live updates for shower lines and bathroom lines (these don't have to be exact just estimates, but it would help congestion). There could be a tab for merch which would show all merch for the day and pricing so you know how much money to bring into the festival. Im not 100% sure, but is it possible to code the app to link to twitter and show tweets with #Coachella attached..if so they should do this so ppl can easily see if there are any special appearances that are happening at the moment or any other spontaneous awesome thing without have to launch the standalone twitter app and searching or missing it altogether. Also, GV could do some pretty cool stuff with the campers throughout the day, so maybe GV can do treasure hunts or other activities that it notifies campers in different camping sections with via the app. Also, Danny Devito and The Hoffs location will be automatically included in the app.

[CaseSensitive]

I used the app last year just to reference set times. It would be cool if had current shower wait times at the campgrounds and maybe a way to drop a pin on your campsite in case you get turned around.

[malcolmjamalawesome]

I just wish the app had more detailed information about what was available/going on all around the fest (ie, food & drink, art, swag, etc). I feel like most years I leave realizing there was cool shit I could have been doing during downtime and I was unaware of it because I was (1) lazy and (2) didn't have that information readily available

[malcolmjamalawesome]

Also, an app that warns you when Kitt Kat is near

[malcolmjamalawesome]

Like with a really scary alarm sound and a big sad face pops up on your phone

[Courtney]

Real-time updates on set times for how late stages are running.

[Courtney]

A map of all the food vendors, with links to their menus and prices.

[Courtney]

The ability to pre-purchase merch and have it waiting and ready to be picked up at the merch tent when you arrive.

[captncrzy]

I know this is probably stupid and can't work, but I'd love to be able to pay for stuff with my phone (ala Starbucks app).

[heart cooks brain]

the schedule really needs to be modified on the app. any act starting their set at midnight is transposed to the next day. just add the jpeg image.

[captncrzy]

A map of all the food vendors, with links to their menus and prices.

Oh, and which beer gardens have what beer. I heard there were other options than Heinie last year and I never found them.

[heart cooks brain]

real time updates on adiz needle levels in the sahara would be nice.

[sonofhal]

Access to Hot Shot's webcam, so I can find that robotic bastard.

[stuporfly]

Access to Hot Shot's webcam, so I can find that robotic bastard.

Hot Shot is everywhere.

[getbetter]

Slightly off the subject of the actual coachella app but I met the owner of the company which makes the wristbands for Coachella, ACL, Lollapooza, etc and he didnt say extactly what they are but there is supposely to be much more social networking features working with your wristband for this festival season.

[SepaGroove]

Slightly off the subject of the actual coachella app but I met the owner of the company which makes the wristbands for Coachella, ACL, Lollapooza, etc and he didnt say extactly what they are but there is supposely to be much more social networking features working with your wristband for this festival season.

Just what we need.

People need to actually watch the artists they showed up to see instead of Facebooking about it the whole time.

[Bumblebee]

Narc locator with cell phone photos

[fatbastard]

Countdown clock as to when a new batch of churros are done.