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Whiteframe Studios

01 — Hospitality and nightlife

PubCam: Designing and Building a Nightlife Discovery App

PubCam answers a question people ask every weekend and can't currently answer: what is that venue actually like right now? The product pairs short clips posted from inside venues with live crowd levels, so the decision about where to go is based on the room as it is tonight rather than photographs taken years ago.

Industry

Hospitality and nightlife

Status

Live on the App Store

Disciplines

Strategy · Brand · Mobile · Web

The problem

  • Deciding where to go out relies on stale information — venue photos from a website refresh years ago, or a review written on a different night entirely.
  • Venues have no way to show a quiet Tuesday differently from a full Saturday, so they compete on static listings that flatten what makes each room distinctive.
  • Existing platforms optimise for bookings and reviews, neither of which tells you whether a place is busy right now.

What the work had to achieve

  • Give people a reason to check the app in the hour before they go out, not the week before.
  • Give venues a channel that reflects a live room rather than a marketing photo.
  • Ship a product that works on a phone, in a dark venue, on a poor connection.

Our responsibilities

  • Product strategy and scope
  • Brand identity
  • End-to-end product design
  • iOS application development
  • Backend, data model and APIs
  • Venue-facing tooling and marketing site

Decisions that shaped it

  1. 01

    Clips over live streams

    Continuous streaming raises cost, privacy and moderation problems disproportionate to the benefit. Short recent clips answer the same question — what's it like right now — while staying cheap to serve and far easier to moderate.

  2. 02

    A recording window, not an open camera

    Clips are capped and can only be posted at participating venues. The constraint keeps content relevant to the room and makes the contribution feel like a small deliberate act rather than surveillance.

  3. 03

    Designed dark, for the room it's used in

    The interface is used at night, in low light, one-handed. That drove the dark palette, the type sizes and the reachability of the primary actions — not an aesthetic preference.

  4. 04

    Age gating as a first-class flow

    An 18+ product needs verification designed in, not appended. It sits in the launch path ahead of any content, for guests and account holders alike.

Brand and interface

  • Identity built around a handwritten wordmark that holds up small, on dark, and over video.
  • A five-slide onboarding that explains the product through motion rather than copy, using real venue footage.
  • Venue screens that lead with live activity — crowd level and recent clips — ahead of static detail.
  • Full dark interface, with every state drawn: empty venues, failed uploads, no location permission.

Screens

  • PubCam sign-in screen offering Apple, Google and email sign-in over a darkened venue clip, with a guest option

    Sign-in sits over live footage rather than a marketing image — the product's argument is made before the account is.

  • PubCam age verification screen asking for a date of birth, headed “Before we show you the night”

    Age verification is a designed step in the launch path, not a modal bolted on. It applies to guests and account holders alike.

  • PubCam map of Wollongong showing venue pins with their logos and filter chips for nightclub, restaurant and bar, pub and bar

    The map answers the other half of the question — what's near me — with venues shown as themselves rather than as identical pins.

  • The feed is the product working: one clip per screen, swiped through like any other short-form feed, each tagged with the venue and when it was posted.

  • PubCam venue screen for The Grand Hotel showing a live crowd-level pill and recent clips

    A venue screen leads with live activity — crowd level and recent clips — before any static detail about the room.

  • PubCam events screen listing happy hours, food deals and drink specials posted by Wollongong venues

    Events, food deals and drink specials, posted by the venues themselves. This is the surface that earns a midweek open, not just a Saturday one.

Engineering approach

  • React Native and Expo, shipping a single codebase to iOS with native modules where the camera and location work demanded it.
  • Supabase for authentication, data and storage, with row-level security enforcing what each role can read and write.
  • Video processed on upload so playback stays light on a phone connection.
  • Separate venue portal and admin surfaces, sharing the data model but with distinct permissions.

What we delivered

  • Brand identity and design system
  • iOS application
  • Backend, data model and APIs
  • Venue portal for managing events and specials
  • Admin dashboard
  • Marketing site at pubcam.com.au

Services this drew on

More work

New business

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