0→1. Leading Design at a Music Startup

The opportunity

When I joined, music streaming had exploded, but it had created a new kind of divide in the home. The people left behind weren't early adopters. They were families, older adults, people for whom Spotify felt alien and consumer electronics felt cold, technical, and bluntly masculine. Designed for enthusiasts, not households.

Our mission was to democratise music and bring personality back. To make family music fun, accessible, and genuinely shared again, not just another screen in the corner of the room. Our central focus from day one: simplicity, personality, and deep emotional connection.

There was no category playbook. No obvious competitor to beat. Just a belief that there was a large, underserved audience (who were predominantly excluded) that wanted something different. And that design would be the thing that either proved or disproved that belief.

My role

I joined as Principal Founding Designer and built the design function from scratch. Over 30 months I led everything hardware, software, brand, packaging, user research, and a small design team of three. I reported directly to the founders and sat at the table for every major product and business decision.

This wasn't a role where design was handed a brief. I helped write the brief.

At the core of the vision was a modular plug-and-play set-top box seamlessly integrated with a TV app. Something that could be set up in minutes, required no technical knowledge, and felt immediately familiar the moment you switched it on. Providing unlimited access to over 70 million songs at point of purchase, it was designed to deliver a seamlessly unified inclusive experience in the home across all devices.

Finding the direction

We spent several weeks in London interviewing adults and families, building an understanding of their preferences and views towards music technology and devices. Alongside the qualitative interviews we carried out quantitative research to steer decisions on product propositions. Market trend analysis ran in parallel, forming the foundation of our strategic direction alongside the user insights.

What came back was consistent: as a new entrant in the market, people wanted something fresher, younger, and importantly different from anything already out there. They wanted music to feel like it used to. Communal, personality-led, alive. We learned we needed to be a brand and product that stood for inclusivity, family fun, and strong ease of use to win.

The Challenge: No Playbook, High Stakes

I took those insights and ran our first internal brand and market positioning workshops, building eight user personas to co-lead sessions that created alignment on exactly who we were designing for and where in the market we aimed to be positioned. That decision made early, made clearly, and committed too, became the foundation every subsequent design decision was tested against.

With our ideal market position defined, the small tight-knit design team spent several days defining our Product Experience Design Principles while exploring initial concepts. We pushed to keep talking to users throughout. A strong focus on staying in tune with how the predominantly excluded audience would want an easy-to-use solution in the family home.

Our brand values: Fun. Iconic. Stylish. Effortless.

Designing The Product

The hardware and software had to feel different, yet complementary. We set about identifying key visual signatures that aligned with our brand values and were in tune with how end users would naturally think about playing music.

One design detail that emerged early was a circular arc intersecting the microphone area to frame the central OK button on the remote. This became a defining design signature. Circles turned out to be the right call in more ways than one: users kept returning to the idea of vinyl records, CD's of music as something physical you hold. That instinct led to songs and albums being represented as spinning discs in the TV app; a digital manifestation of a physical music product. Combined, circles became a key signifier running through the entire design language.

During each bi-weekly investor meeting, we worked on several connecting parts of the holistic experience and included regular user 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 refine our user flows for the TV app based on practical insights, and a growing library of components.

User testing & Ethnography

We built, tested, iterated. Photoshop comps as screen visuals before Figma existed. Physical 3D-printed CAD models built with external model makers. Site maps, wireframes, and clickable prototypes tested live with users in their homes, with numerous iterative updates made throughout. Bi-weekly investor reviews where we presented work in progress, refined user flows for the TV app based on practical insights, and grew a component library alongside.‍

More Designing The Product

The first product launched as "Electric Jukebox". A name that reflected our mission to "make music listening together exciting again", and our USP of unlimited access to over 70 million songs at point of purchase. It was a name we defined with our first set of users, together. As a means to push further for market differentiation and away from associations with traditional jukeboxes. This later changed to ROXI for our second product launch, a name we believed to be fun, ownable, and easily said in a crowd.

Following both launches we continued expanding, adding new devices and features to the roadmap, each one increasing the company's value and strengthening the case for acquisition.

Building The Brand

The visual brand language was inspired by the bright lights of music theatre shows and fun fairs. All the environments and occasions where music, fun, and family naturally come together.

As we expanded the design library through refining wireframes and iconography, everything was filtered through that emotional reference point. Crucially, the library was also shaped by a deliberate business decision: to be heavily lifestyle-oriented rather than tech-focused, deliberately differentiating from competitors who were providing operational devices and list based streaming platforms. We were not building another piece of technology. We were building something that belonged in the living room, for all the family.

Bringing It All Together

We kept the team small and focused with expertise in visual, interaction and product design. External branding and marketing partners handled the messaging story. Overtime I owned CMF, the design system, packaging, art direction for photoshoots, and the future product roadmap used to secure continued investor confidence.

To maintain focus and design standards in a fast-moving environment, I pushed for set bi-weekly design review meetings with business leaders. A forcing function where new tasks, priorities, and critiques were discussed and design remained visible and accountable when the pressure to just ship was constant.

The craft was never the hard part.

The hard part was everything else. Keeping a design vision intact across thirty months of investor pressure, manufacturing partners across two continents, two product launches, and a leadership team that didn't always agree. Learning when to hold the line on a design decision and when the right call was to let something go in service of the bigger goal. None of that is in the job description.

What got us through was a shared commitment to the purpose, a team that despite the disagreements wanted to have a positive impact, and the discipline to keep coming back to the user when everything else pulled us elsewhere.

This was a product made for the families (including the kids and grandkids) that the consumer tech industry forgot. The company was acquired. The product was in homes bringing families together again. That's the measure that matters.