Radial
Radial is a social Caribbean music app. The app is marketed to Soca fans around the world; primarily, in the Caribbean Diaspora. My responsibility is to lead all design activities for the app and marketing including research, design, spec, and branding. I work closely with the founders on product and growth strategies.
What is Soca?
Music in the Caribbean plays a massive role in the lives, history and cultures of each of these island nations. Soca is a popular genre of Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago. It is a fusion of Calypso with other Indo-Caribbean styles that include elements of East Indian music.
Before starting any user research, I needed to learn everything I could about the Caribbean music culture including carnivals, fans, and overall landscape for artists. Unlike the U.S., which is dominated by music labels that have mature distribution channels; Soca artists depend on events, merchandise, and overall engagement with fans. This leads to a very passionate fanbase that stretches from the CaribbeanDiaspora to London, Toronto, New York, and Washington DC.
U.S. and International Fans
Once I gained a good understanding of Soca, I then started researching the fans, artists, producers, and DJs. We gained valuable data as a result of surveys and one on one interviews with 45 fans across the Diaspora, Canada, and US. We also gained insights from local artists and one of the founders, who happens to be a DJ and an up and coming producer in Trinidad, to understand the needs and pain points from the “producer” point of view. Our findings led to the creation of personas and journeys that would be used to inform our design.
Design Challenges
Insights from our research were used to create design challenges. Design challenges are a great way of generating ideas from the team. Every day I would post a design challenge to the team on Slack and allow them to come up with anything they wanted. The team loved the concept of having no limits to their brainstorming. With just 6 challenges, we generated 100 ideas. This was beneficial to our team as we are entirely remote and dispersed between Washington DC, Seattle, and Trinidad.
Wireframes
Once I gained a good understanding of Soca, I then started researching the fans, artists, producers, and DJs. We gained valuable data as a result of surveys and one on one interviews with fans across the Diaspora, Canada, and US. We also gained insights from local artists, one of the founders who happens to be a DJ and an up and coming producer in Trinidad to understand the needs and pain points from the “producer” point of view. Our findings led to the creation of personas and journeys that would be used to inform our design.
Prototype w/ InvisionApp
The ability to install our Invision prototypes on our mobile devices made it easy for all of us to validate our designs with users around our local geographies.
Visual Design
I recommended a clean minimal look on the visual design where the abundance of color would be provided from the fans and artist. This app is a platform for Caribbean music and culture, so the use of real colors from album artwork and users will allow the culture to resonate throughout the app. In addition to app design, I rebranded our marketing and created a new logo and icon.
