ShowGroup

Bringing an Event Marketplace to Native Mobile

ShowGroup is an Italian digital marketplace that connects event organizers with the people who make events happen — artists, venues, operators and food & beverage professionals. My role was directing the native iOS and Android apps that bring that marketplace into people’s pockets.

ShowGroup positions itself as the easy, fast and free way to find event professionals “in un click”. The catalogue spans entertainers, magicians and performers; bands, singers, DJs and dancers; photographers, hairstylists, make-up artists, event planners and security staff; bartenders, cake designers, caterers, chefs and sommeliers; and venues from historic estates to hotels and restaurants. The platform publicly reports roughly 17,700 professional storefronts (“vetrine”) across every Italian province, with more than a thousand professionals hired in a single month.

The web platform, brand and overall UX were designed and built by the agency Emporio ADV, who shaped an essential, intuitive interface around two audiences: professionals creating their showcase, and private users looking to book them. I led the layer that audience increasingly lives in — the native mobile apps.

I directed the development of the iOS app in Swift and SwiftUI and the Android app in Kotlin, translating the marketplace into two platform-native experiences instead of a single wrapped webview. The apps consume the ShowGroup platform API and keep the core loop direct: a splash and login, a dashboard, then category browsing, a searchable and filterable list of “vetrine”, rich profile pages with photo and video galleries, ratings, biography and experience, and one-tap contact through messaging or a direct request.

Mobile imposed its own constraints. Discovery had to stay dense but legible across dozens of categories; profile pages had to present galleries, descriptions and contact actions without friction; favourites, messages and the user’s own profile had to feel immediate. The same product had to read correctly under Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines on iOS and Material patterns on Android, sharing one product logic while respecting each platform’s conventions.

The result is a pair of native apps that put an event-services marketplace within reach: find the right artist, venue or professional quickly, see exactly what they offer, and get in touch — turning event intent into a real contact in a few taps.