Reinventing the music experience with an entirely new all-in-one physical & digital solution, and in turn, disrupt an industry.
Being Part of Revolutionary Change!
A COO & CEO approached me to join them and help them revolutionize the music experience in the home, designing an all-in-one plug & play solution designed to be effortlessly inclusive & intuitive for users of all ages - from scratch! Beyond Industrial Design, becoming the Head of Design reporting to the CEO, I led all of our design output. From Hardware to Software, including the User Experience, User Research, Industrial Design and CMF, Packaging and Marketing assets for launch. This extended into defining our product portfolio roadmap to increase our ability to be sold to a tech giant.
At a time when music streaming had created a digital gap in the home and consumer electronics felt technical and masculine, this start-up had the mission to democratize music, and bring it back to its roots of being accessible and fun. A central focus revolved around simplicity, personality, and fostering deep emotional connections - bringing everyone together again through music.
Outcomes
• Put this start-up company on the journey to later become acquired by SKY TV
• 100,000 units sold in leading retailers Argos, Amazon, & Selfridge's
• A Stock-listed company with £100 million valuation
• £14 million secured investment in years 1 & 2
• A product launched that bridged generations and brought families together to listen to music
• Music celebrity endorsement: Alesha Dixon, Robbie Williams, Sheryl Crow
What I did
• Defined business direction and future product portfolio, identifying new opportunities
• Led design direction & creation of two digital-physical connected B2C products
• Communicated strategy and vision to teams at all-hands, design reviews and team meetings
• Partnered and collaborated with Engineering, Sales, Operations, Manufacturing and Marketing senior leads
• Created and developed interactive prototypes & 3D models
• Hired and built a small design team
.jpg)
Summary
For 30+ months I collaborated closely with Marketing, Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations, and Sales as the Principal Founding Designer to uncover a fresh perspective of what a compelling and blended physical & digital product experience looked like. We reimagined the underlying business processes and even the strategies for music celebrity endorsement and sales (both Retail and Online Direct-To-Consumer).
At the core of our vision lay a modular plug-and-play set-top box seamlessly integrated with a TV app that could be set up in minutes. Following the 1st & 2nd Product launch, we added further devices and new features to our roadmap increasing our company buy-out acquisition. All products aimed at delivering a seamlessly unified user experience in the home.
Key Challenges
• Aligning product development times across 2D & 3D
• Bi-weekly pitch investment meetings eating design development time
• Clash of personalities and start-up resignations
• Finding a manufacturer in Asia (Lots of visits)
• Interviewing & hiring new designers
• Missing our project launch date
• High ambiguity, no structured tried and tested path
Approach
Design Research Discovery
We spent several weeks in London interviewing adults and families, building an understanding of their preferences and views towards music technology and devices. Additionally, we carried out quantitive research to steer decisions on product propositions. It was obvious that people wanted a fresher, younger, and importantly ‘different’ product if they were to buy from us as a new entrant in the market. We learnt we needed to be a brand and product that represented inclusivity, fun and strong ease of use to win.
Design Strategy
After these user insight conversations, I created a range of 8 user personas to co-lead our first internal brand market positioning & target user workshops. It was key to gain consensus and internal stakeholder alignment on who specifically we were targeting and where in the market we aimed to be positioned. This alongside market trend analysis formed the foundation of our key direction for us moving forward.
Having defined our ideal company brand market position, and values of being Fun, Iconic, Stylish and Effortless, as a small tight-knit design team we spent several days defining the Product Experience Design Principles, while exploring initial concepts. We pushed to keep talking to users, as a strong focus was on being in tune with how end users (the predominantly excluded audience) would want an easy-to-use solution in the home.
Prototyping and User Testing
Using photoshopped screens as page visuals (these were the days before Figma) and working closely with external 3D model makers, we defined a connected experience that we believed would resonate with our target customer. We then created site maps, wireframes (as page visuals), and used these to test with users in their homes, making numerous constant iterative updates.
Designing The Product
Our features across both hardware & software had to be different, yet complimentary. We set about identifying key visual signatures that aligned first with our brand values of Fun, Iconic, Stylish and Effortless, and also be in tune with how end 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 detail signature, with visions to have our logo on the rear in clear view. As we continued, listening 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 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.
Developing the Brand Language
Our first name “Electric Jukebox” reflected our mission to make music listening together exciting or thrilling again, and our USP of providing unlimited access to over 70 million songs at point of purchase. 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.
The visual brand language was inspired by the bright lights in music theatre shows & fun fairs - all environments and occasions of music, fun and family.
Overtime, we started to develop a unique Design Library as we worked through refining wireframes and iconography. The design library was influenced by our visual brand language direction, in addition to a business need to push being heavily lifestyle oriented more than our tech competitors who focused on providing operational devices and streaming platforms at that time.
Bringing Brand, Strategy & Product together
Eventually, we had the core 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 design developments.
We tasked a separate external branding & marketing team to help define our brand story for messaging and I continued to work on developing the CMF, a design system, product packaging and art direction for photoshoots as well as our future product roadmap to show investors. To maintain focus and design standards, I pushed for set bi-weekly design review meetings involving other business leaders, where new tasks, priorities and critiques will be discussed.
• Designing for a holistic digital-physical experience
My background in physical hardware design taught me the value I bring in connecting a seamless experience, where the transition between digital and physical interactions needs to be pushed to be fluid and intuitive, engaging all senses and interaction modes. This was in designing our haptic feedback, determining the balance of combined use of hard versus soft buttons, and crafting the out-of-the-box experience to reflect brand values. The result is a seamless integration where software complements hardware, and hardware complements software, creating a unified and thoroughly tested product experience with people.
• Managing complex workstreams: Balancing Physical and Digital
I quickly learned to communicate across digital, brand & marketing, manufacturing, and business domains, effectively coordinating different workstreams. A key insight was the distinct nature of physical and digital processes: physical projects demand more time and strategic planning due to higher risks in tooling, post-manufacture sales, and the need for extensive upfront critical thinking before finishing the design. In contrast, digital is reactive, flexible, and capable of accommodating last-minute changes - leading to less pressure to be final. This understanding was crucial for managing the complexities of integrating physical and digital design workstreams.
• Leading design in the start-up
I learned the importance of adaptability and flexibility. My past routine of having a fully planned day shifted to maintaining a general direction while being ready to address unexpected issues as they arose. I also became significantly more resourceful, discovering new ways to progress, such as partnering with design recruitment agencies, collaborating with manufacturing partners, leveraging my network, and actively seeking out information. This experience honed my ability and interest to thrive in a dynamic environment and drive design initiatives forward despite constant change and uncertainty.
• Design guidelines, processes & systems
I learnt the importance of creating and maintaining design guidelines, and having a source of documentation for all of us to refer and add to. With people joining and existing in the start-up this helped secure alignment and clarity, but also to ensure the visual expression of our brand (through product, marketing and tech) were implemented consistently and effectively. This included me creating a review process to add new components, imagery, colours, styles etc.
