The UX of Twenty-One Pilots

Music is an essential part of my life, it has been in my biggest and lowest moments. I love finding new artists making them part of the soundtrack of my life. Back in 2011 I discover a duo of musicians from Ohio, with a song called Car Radio, quite dark in the lyrics but fun in the sound. I became to listen to them quite regularly but I was complete unaware of the universe they create for their fans.

Being a User experience designer thought me that for creating a Digital Product or a overall product you need to create mock-ups, an user research and an usability test. After listening, researching and reading about these artist, they do these exact process to create their products, they see their music as a service to people, using the storytelling in different platforms.

They create a whole universe around the band’s albums. Starting with the song that brought me to them, they started to create a story that joins every album, the fourth album (Blurryface) was the one that shapes the universe and the story to come, they create a multi-platform social media and music experience that was beyond music. They create a character (Blurry) that is the representation of the fears that wants to dominates Tyler (Lead singer). Physical represented by the color red and that black paint that he used. Then after the color changed into an orange nuance in Heathens, that represents a transition coming from red to yellow, that will be after used in the fifth (Trench) album. These color direction is a great representation of the color use in storytelling, as seeing in movies, every color has a meaning. The color psychology is well represented as the colors they used have a meaning for each album, each theme, and they are part of a big story where by showing us the color red that means passion. We see that’s is when Taylor is more driving to sadness, is close to those fears and anxiety but is fighting to overcome it and joining the rebellion, the yellow. The color of happiness, the light.

Then after the band went quiet and upload a series of cryptic social media post and webpages turning these whole experience not only just about music but into a game, using gamification. Gamification is the technique of inserting game mechanics into non-game products. It’s the manifestation of care about the users, as the brand tries to make the product UX fun and entertaining, like a game. Their merchandise page (http://dmaorg.info/) was appearing with a 404 Error with a message to be encrypted.

That code was the clue to unlocked an other character Clancy. The diaries of Clancy named Dima that is the represents the dark side of Taylor mind, that map is graphically represented as the cover of the first album. (Isn’t that amazing?)

With these, they release a new video (Jumpsuit) that start exactly where Heavy dirty soul ends, and in these video everything started to change into the yellow, representing the light, overcoming the fear and sadness that Blurryface represented.

After all these experience the band also share a lot of content behind the scene, humanizing the band, creating a close relation with their fans, making a more close experience. They also highlight their fans, they allow fans to post or message them directly about their thoughts on recent concerts. Having a close insight to users experience in their concerts.

They also use the consistency principle for a great UX, that every music video is connected, every song name has a meaning, their live performance is a interaction game, everything is connected and consistence. These kind of fluent movements, allows the user to be connected with the band, and expectant of what can come next, every time they post something there is a lot of theories of what that means . This creates a close community, that converts into more songs downloads, reproductions, video views.

Success! A great User Experience.

Thank you for reading this.