KEY Challenges
Aligning product development times across 2D & 3D
Bi-weekly pitch investment meetings eating design development time
Clash of personalities and resignations
Finding a manufacturer in Asia
Interviewing & hiring new designers
Missing our project launch date
DESIGN research
We spent several weeks in London interviewing adults and families, building an understanding of their preferences and views towards music technology and devices. It was obvious that people wanted a fresher, younger, and importantly ‘different’ product if they were to buy from us. We needed to be a brand and product that represented inclusivity and strong ease of use.
After these user insight conversations, I created a range of 8 user personas to co-led our first internal brand market positioning and target user workshop. It was keen to gain internal stakeholder alignment on who specifically we were targeting and where in the market we aimed to be. This alongside market trend analysis formed the foundation of our key direction for us moving forward.
The brand lanugage was inspired by the bright lights in theatre shows & fun fairs
DEVELOPING A BRAND
Our first name “Electric Jukebox” reflected our mission to make music listening together exciting or thrilling again, and us providing unlimited access to over 70 million songs. It’s something we defined with our first set of users, together. As a means to further push for market differentiation and away from connections of traditional jukeboxes, this later changed to ROXi at our second launch. A name we believed to be fun and easily said in a crowd.
Designing the PRODUCT
Our features across both hardware & software had to be different. We set about identifying key visual signatures that would align first with our brand values to be Fun, Iconic, Stylish and Effortless, and also be in tune with how alienated users would think about playing music. The development of a circular arc intersecting the microphone area to frame the key 'OK' button became a liked design signature, with visions to have our logo on the rear in clear view. As we listened to users stating they wanted something as simple to use as a CD or record and analogue. This led to the idea of music songs and albums being represented as spinning disks on the TV app – a digital manifestation of a physical music product. Combined, this led to circles being a key signifier in our design language.
During each bi-weekly investor meeting, we worked on several connecting parts of the experience and included regular testing to validate the design developments. Working rapidly, initially in Photoshop and 3D printed CAD models the design was put together, we then started to build out user flows for the TV app with a growing library of components.
prototyping & testing
Using photoshop page visuals and working closely with external model makers, we defined experiences that we believed would resonate with our target customer. We then created site maps, wireframes, and used these to test with users in their homes, and made iterative updates.
Overtime, we started to develop a Design Library as we worked on the wireframes and iconography. The design library and visual direction was influenced by our brand direction. Stylish, fun & Effortless, and much more lifestyle orientated than typical devices and streaming platforms.
BRINGING BRAND, STRATEGY & PRODUCT TOGETHER
Eventually, we had the pieces and an aligned direction. We stayed as a small tight design team of a visual designer, product designer and interaction designer working together through developments. We tasked a separate brand design team to help in defining our brand story, adding to our thinking process as myself and the design team continued to work on developing CMF, a design system, packaging and art direction for photoshoots and future product roadmap. To maintain focus and design standards, I pushed for set bi-weekly design review meetings involving other business leads where new tasks, priorities and critiques will be discussed.
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