Reinventing the shared family music experience with an entirely new all-in-one physical & digital solution, and in turn disrupt an industry.
As Principal Founding Designer, I built the design function from scratch at a music startup with no category playbook, leading everything from hardware and software to brand, packaging, and user research. Over 30+ months I shaped the product vision, built and led the tight-knit design team, and helped take the company from concept to commercial scale. The product sold 100,000 units through Argos, Amazon, and Selfridges, secured £14 million in investment, and was later acquired by SKY TV.
At the time music streaming had erupted and created a digital divide gap in the home. Consumer electronics all felt technical and masculine. This start-up had the mission to democratize music and bring personality back. Bringing back the ethos of music being accessible and fun for all family members. Our central focus revolved around simplicity, personality, and fostering deep emotional connections.
Outcomes
• Acquired by SKY TV
• £14 million secured investment in years 1 & 2
• 100,000 units sold through Argos, Amazon, & Selfridge's
• £100 million stock-listed valuation
• Music partnerships: 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 out a small design team
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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.
Approach
Making The Big Decision: Who Is This For
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.
The Challenge: No Playbook, High Stakes
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.
Getting to know the user. 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.
Building 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.
Building ROXI taught me that the hardest part of leading design in a startup isn't the craft, it's holding a clear direction when everything around you is moving. Investor pressure, funding finance, personality clashes, missing launch dates, finding manufacturers in Asia. None of that is in the job description!
What got us through was us all being committed to the purpose, a design vision, a team that trusted each other (dispite the disagreeements), and the discipline to keep coming back to the user when everything else pulled us elsewhere.
The company was acquired. The product is still in homes. That's the measure that matters.
