[untitled] (yes, it's literally called "[untitled]" including the brackets) is an app for musicians to share pre-released tracks with their pals before the songs are made available for wide release (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)

Hence the name; these unreleased songs might not yet be named.

In May of 2023, I designed the listening interaction and the account creation funnel as part of a design exercise while interviewing for their Product Designer role. Unfortunately I didn't get the gig, but it was a good way to keep my skills sharp while I look for my next thing.

Here's the prompt that was given for the design exercise.

Based on the prompt given, I split my design work into two main sections. First, I focused on the listening experience. Second, I focused on sticky interactions which would nudge the user to make an account and download the app.

Part I - Listen to the Track

The user must be able to listen to the track and it should feel sacred, fun, and have spicy interactions and craft. Here's the original text of the prompt with the relevant sections highlighted:

To make the listening experience feel magical, I combined two ideas:

• Particle emission from the album art (see emission pattern graph below for more details)

• 3D Parallax for album art and particles

Below is one of my pages from the brainstorming / sketching process with the particle emission and 3D parallax sections highlighted in green.

The color of the particles would be derived from from a color pallet generated by the album art itself.

The two examples below are NOT 100% to spec of what I'd want it to look like. These were quick mock-ups given the 2 day turnaround time. Here are some key differences:

With the first video, the particles stop, and animate back into the album. In reality, the particles would emit outward constantly, and their emission would stop when paused, allowing all residual particles to continue floating and fading away.

Here's a Spline prototype showing the 3D parallax of the particles' relation to the album art. This perspective will be accessible through touch interactions or hover interactions, depending on the device.

Here's the particle emission graph I promised. When the track isn't being played, there will be no particle emission. When the user clicks play, there's a burst of particles (red) and then after the initial burst the particles will match the waveform of the track, where more particles are emitted in louder sections (yellow) and fewer during the quieter sections. (green)

Part II - Account Creation & Download

The second part is that the user should be nudged to create an account and download the app.

These two goals are achieved by creating some interaction that can't be accomplished without an account or app download.

It was recommended to get the user to click the "Save to Library" button, but at the time I didn't have full context on what benefit that would provide to the user, so I pursued a different "stickiness factor" for the sake of getting this exercise back to the team quickly.

Now that I have context on the "why" behind the "Save to Library" functionality, I'd certainly be able to design for that.

The interactions I explored were as follows:

• Allow users to highlight sections of a track to give it a positive or negative rating

• Emoji reactions on the timeline of the track

This is somewhat similar to Soundcloud's ability to add a comment at a point in the track, but it's an improvement over Soundcloud in that the emoji is basically the "header" in that it's visible when the comment is collapsed. This means you can see the sentiments on the timeline without needing to read each comment.

Plus, given the [untitled] use case, these comments / reactions wouldn't be public for users to see other people's reactions, since [untitled] is more about direct relationships with the artist, instead of a wide audience of people like on Soundcloud.

Here are some high-fidelity explorations.

I prototyped my favorite flow in Figma and made a high fidelity device mockup of it. The button encourages sign-in or account creation.

At the end of the two day turnaround, I'd filled up a Figma page with sufficient amounts of chaos.

Measurable outcomes

Here are some business oriented measurable outcomes that could be tested after implementing some of the above features.

1. Increase in User Engagement:

   • Time spent on the app per session

   • Number of tracks listened to per user

   • Number of interactions with particle emission and 3D parallax features

   • Number of positive/negative ratings and emoji reactions given to tracks

   • Number of comments left on tracks

2. User Acquisition and Retention:

   • Number of new user sign-ups

   • Conversion rate from app downloads to account creation

   • Retention rate of active users over a specific period

   • Number of users who click the "Save to Library" button

   • Percentage of users who return to the app within a defined timeframe

3. User Satisfaction and App Quality:

   • User ratings and reviews of the app in app stores

   • Net Promoter Score (NPS) or customer satisfaction score

   • User feedback and sentiment analysis from surveys or feedback channels

4. Business Growth and Monetization Opportunities:

   • Increase in the number of artists and musicians using the platform

   • Number of pre-released tracks shared on the app

   • Opportunities for partnerships with music labels or artists

   • Potential revenue streams from premium features (e.g., fans-only area)

   • Increase in brand awareness and positive brand perception in the music industry

5. Differentiation and Competitive Advantage:

   • Comparison with competitor platforms in terms of functionality and user experience

   • Number of users who switch from competing platforms to [untitled]

   • Positive press coverage and industry recognition

Other thoughts

This is an exciting space and I have many other thoughts for the future of [untitled] or any similar tool:

• Version history for each song to show the evolution and various different creative directions

• Manually annotated "diff" view to compare directly what changed with each song, including a change summary field

• Paywalling certain areas to have a "fans only" area where they can look under the hood at the process

• Compete with some of genius.com's functionality in terms of collaborative annotations on lyrics etc.

• Wiki-like collaboration on various fields, including track name. Could allow folks to vote on their favorite track name?

Unfortunately I didn't get the job, but I wish [untitled] all the best because I believe the music industry is in dire need of new innovative tools which can help musicians to more easily unleash their art upon the world.

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