Playtime mini app
PlayTime is Mongolia's biggest music festival, and Skytel's been a partner for years, running a booth on the festival grounds every edition. This year they wanted something more than a booth. Skytel launched a mini app for festival-goers to build their own lineup and go on a treasure hunt around the field for gifts and merch. I was the only UX designer on it, took it from zero to a working, festival-ready prototype, on a pretty tight timeline.
Client
Skytel Group
2026
Telecommunications / Entertainment
UX/UI Designer - Solo Designer on Project
0->1 Product design
Challenge
The tricky part was that this app had to feel like two things at once. It's a Skytel product, and Skytel's whole 5G identity is sleek and futuristic. But it's also a PlayTime thing, and PlayTime is all about freedom, self-expression, and just being yourself at a festival. I wanted it to actually feel fun and festival-native, not like a corporate app dressed up for the occasion. On top of that, the treasure hunt itself (scanning QR codes, finding stuff on a map) had to be dead simple. People would be using it outside, in a crowd, half-distracted, often with friends around them. Nobody was going to sit down and read instructions.
Results
Ended up with a mini app that actually felt like PlayTime: colorful, playful, a bit loose, while still carrying that Skytel futuristic thread through the astronaut and cosmic visuals. It gave Skytel a real presence on the festival field itself, not just a booth people walk past.
Process
Went with a cosmic, astronaut theme. It let me keep that futuristic Skytel feeling without making the app feel cold or corporate, and it gave me room to have fun visually.
Started with the lineup feature since it's the thing people would use most: browse by day, filter by time, stage, or artist, bookmark the acts you care about.
Built out artist profile cards with photos, short bios, and social links, so people could discover acts they didn't already know. Felt important for that festival-discovery moment.
Designed the treasure hunt as a real map layer: little avatars showing where gifts were hidden, distance to each one, and a QR scan to claim it. Basically turning the phone into part of the physical festival experience.
Kept sign-in to just a phone number, one step, no friction. It's a festival crowd, nobody has patience for onboarding.
Put everything (lineup, map, profile, treasure hunt) behind one simple bottom nav so people could jump between things fast.
Conclusion
This one was about holding two brand identities at once without either one canceling out the other: Skytel's technical, forward-looking side, and PlayTime's whole "be free, be yourself" energy. Being solo on it, on a short timeline, meant a lot of fast decisions, but I tried to keep them intentional ones. It was a fun project to work on. Not many chances come along to design something people are actually going to use while dancing in a field.
