Soundoff
Freelance product designer
2020
-
2023
Soundoff is redefining music discovery by shifting from algorithm-driven recommendations to a more organic, community-oriented approach. By leveraging social connections, the platform allows users to discover new music through friends, influencers, and shared experiences—just like in real life.
As the sole designer on the team, I created visual assets, wireframes, prototypes, interactions and design concepts. I also conducted research through user interviews to create accurate user persona to help founders find and explore market fit.
Tools used
Concepts App
Figjam
Figma
Affinity designer
Adobe Indesign
Adobe Illustrator
Luma fusion
skills
UI/UX design
branding
Graphic design
problem solving
Design thinking
User empathy
user research
marketing
Competitive analysis
Highlight
I lead UI/UX changes efforts and contributed to rebranding efforts which helped us attract a lot of artists and users on the platform.
New artists on platform
Successful competitions
New Instagram followers
My User Experience (UX) Design Process
Understand current app design and user flow
Brainstorming to uncover the right solution
Replicate the mock-up into the final product
Talk to users and look at the competition
High fidelity prototype to validate idea and generate user feedback
App is live, now we monitor and get more feedback
User research
Constestants
Voters
Soundoff users can be categorized into contestants and voters
A contestant is any creator whose song link has been submitted to a contest channel on Soundoff. Anyone, including non artists can submit song links.
A voter, is anyone who expresses their music preference by casting a vote. Anyone including artists can cast a vote.
Gathering feedback
Throughout the different iterative phases of the redesign, there was a lot of back and forth between us and the user.
This phase was very important because it allowed us to better understand users frustrations with the solution that we were providing so that we could iterate from that feedback instead of creating a whole new versions based on our own biased assumptions, we wanted to create something that people actually want.
Marli
Contestant
I would love to see something like Reddit for music that allows us to quickly upvote songs we like which will help with ranking and discovery.
Bourgeois
Contestant
I have Spotify and soundcloud for uploading my music.
I think that what we need is a social app for music lovers that will allow us to connect around our shared love for music.
Kinkaid
Contestant
As an artist who is already on platforms like Soundcloud, and Spotify, I am reticent to upload to yet another platform.
A platform focused on promotion and discovery sounds amazing!
Abdoul Aziz C.
Voter
Swipe left/right feels unfinished and broken as it does two things at the same time — voting and skipping songs.
More, there is no way to go back to a song I skipped which is frustrating.
Bryce O
Voter
Voting doesn’t feel intuitive and engaging. I wish it was more focused on the artist and helped us learn about who they are, and what their music is about so we can connect at a deeper level.
Konrad M.
Voter
I love Spotify, but I wish they had more community features to allow me see what my friends are listening to.
I think that's the missing piece in the music world, more community!
Beside interviewing users, I also spent a lot of time looking at the competition. My competitive analysis consisted of dissecting these apps as well as reading some reviews to try to get insight on some pain points their users were dealing with.
Identifying large Pain-points
Lack of exposure
Many new artists struggle to get their music heard by a wider audience, especially if they don't have a strong social media presence or the resources to promote their music effectively.
Difficulty standing out
With so many new artists on platforms like Spotify and SoundCloud, it can be challenging to stand out and capture listeners' attention.
No feedback and lack of community
Without a dedicated platform for showcasing their music, new artists may have difficulty getting feedback on their work, which can make it hard to improve and grow as an artist.
Artists
Confusing voting and rewards UX
Swipe both skips song and votes which makes navigating the main screen very confusing for users
Limited diversity
Platforms may prioritize popular or mainstream artists, which can make it difficult for listeners to discover new and diverse music that they may enjoy.
No community curation
Although some platforms offer playlists and recommendations, a lot of these platform don’t offer community driven curation, and playlist created by others are not easily discoverable.
Listeners
Explore and design
Refining Concepts
Voting
Voting has been rethought from the ground up, allow for more engagement on the platform. When a competition is open users can listen to two artist in a face off and decide which artist they want to see move to the next round.
This feature was highly requested by both fans and artists and has allowed Soundoff to run multiple competition
Pain points we were trying to address
Voting is broken, and has a confusing UX which makes enjoying music and engaging with the platform hard.
Emerging artist need a new type of music platform that allows for new ways to be discovered.
Chart
Along side the the revamp vote, we also introduced a chart that allow artists to view how they rank in a given category and for listeners to discovery new artists that are making waves.
This was a very welcomed feature that let to more engagement on the platform and led to more organic growth. We also brought voting to the web, allowing even more people to be engaged with the platform and their favorite artists
Pain points we were trying to address
Endless scroll to find the right group chat.
User can’t easily find message they have been tagged in.
Too many notifications
Bringing music to Soundoff
Instead of focus on direct music upload, we instead shifted focus to allowing artists to bring theirs songs to out platform thus reducing friction and the number of places artist have to upload their songs to. This led to more adoption as we were able to lift some of the weight off of artists allowing them insted to focus on their craft.
Pain points we were trying to address
Not easy to build friendship outside of chat especially with COVID
No real sense of presence with
Feed
We have rethought from the ground up the way that user discover music and how artist share their music. Instead of focus on uploading music on the platform, we instead shifted focus to music sharing and consumption and created a hybrid experience that combine music with an instagram like experience.
Pain points we were trying to address
Not easy to build friendship outside of chat especially with COVID
No real sense of presence with
Preparing for Handoff
Handoff was fairly easy as we were a very small team of about 5 people. It was usually done through a Figma walkthrough and a prototype demo.
That being said I was very involved throughout the process to ensure I made myself available for any questions that the team may have had during implementation.
Key takeaways
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