Heat.wav MVP
A community-based music discovery app that gives up-and-coming artists a fair chance
TL:DR
Heat.wav is a new way to discover music through your local community. Forget streaming. Imagine a community of artists and fans near you, giving you the boost you need to launch your career to the next phase, or discovering the next Lil Nas X before anybody else.
It focuses on simplicity, linearity and playfulness and introduces a unique, location-based experience that encourages curiosity and exploration when used to consume music and organic exposure that grows with positive listener feedback when used to promote music.
As the sole product designer throughout the Heat.wav project, I led all product and design efforts from research and interviews, feature definition, actual product design, development handoff to landing page and copy which you can see here.
a little recap from Heat.wav Overview
The problem
As much as streaming platforms have lowered the barrier of distribution, the problem of discoverability persists. When you are a new kid on the scene and your latest release immediately gets lost in a catalogue of 50M songs, music is no longer the only thing you have to compete with.
Seeing artists cold emailing to get on popular playlist and running facebook ads just to promote new songs, I believe there is an organic, human side of emerging music that we can recover through location.
After recognizing the shortcomings of existing product offerings and examining listener behaviors, I set out to create a music discovery experience that actually lets people discover through curiosity, not familiarity.
In order to do this, I drew inspiration across product categories that leverage curiosity, such as dating apps that turn strangers into lovers, and games that entice players with unfamiliar experiences.
Objectives
Heat.wav MVP is a lean, mobile-first take on what Heat.wav can be after refining the product based on a more realistic roadmap. Read more about the evolution of Heat.wav ➞
With that being said, I set out to design it with three feature goals and three business goals in mind:
Feature goals
- Help discover tracks and artists that are below the threshold of being picked up by platform algorithms and curators.
- Algorithm-based organic discovery curated by location, not human to take politics out of music.
- Gentle learning curve to maximize conversion and retention by not overwhelming users.
Business goals
- Test true market demand and audience acceptance for discovering brand new music.
- Grow to 5000 users without intensive capital commitment.
- Architecture readiness: gesture-based multi-page navigation allows app to expand in blocks. Back-end was designed to support a future map view.
Who is it for
Heat.wav brings together emerging artists, music industry professionals, music enthusiasts, tastemakers and casual listeners in one place. It is designed to be both a tool and a toy, depending on the use case.
First Level (Essential to user):
Second Level (Functional to user):
Third Level (Fun to user):
Highlights
Take what you know about music apps.
Toss it out.
Finding new music shouldn’t be about going down a list. Heat.wav gives you the most interactive music experience to date.
Each artist gets all the spotlight before you decide to swipe left or right. Dive into artist cards to check out more music and connect with them on socials.
How does it work?
Every song on Heat.wav is location-based. Heat.wav uses the location of each artist to create a crowd-sourced, discovery network. The more right swipes a track receives, the larger the area it’ll cover and more people will hear it.
For Fans
Connect with artists like nowhere else.
Swipe
Swipe left to skip, swipe right to like, nothing groundbreaking. But under the hood, your swipes among others will decide how far a track will reach.
Connect
Forget follower counts. Forget the number of streams. Connect with artists you like no matter the stage in their careers. Or just for fun, see how far away they are from you.
Play
All the tracks you’ve swiped right on in one place. Play again, save to Spotify, check out the artist, it’s up to you. Tapping on the profile picture brings up the artist card.
For Artists
Cut through recommendation algorithms, guaranteed visibility to listeners near you.
Artist Card
Your artist card is your Heat.wav community pass. It gathers all your tracks and social links in one tactile place. Preview exactly how you will be presented to listeners near you.
Settings
Heat.wav is designed to be used by you, the artist, not the manager. Without the unnecessary complexity, you have everything you want to be in control at-a-glance.
Stats
We understand how important it is to see how Heat.wav is working for you. See how many impressions versus likes you’ve received on Heat.wav, and which track is doing better.
Privacy, Privacy, *******
As a location-based platform, privacy is essential to Heat.wav. I designed Heat.wav to never store or sell user’s location data, and all displayable locations are randomized within a calculated radius based on population density to ensure maximum privacy.
Design
Onboard
A visually persuasive onboard experience that removes all unnecessary frictions during the sign up process while giving just enough information to customize each experience.
Simplified Sign In
A SMS-enabled single step sign-up is used to allow future social features, such as instantly adding friends from contacts. Conversion is the key driver for this decision.
Functional Theming
Each section has its own color from walkthrough, authentication to finishing up. This creates a sense of progression and clarity that also serves as part of the app’s design language. Among 57 users that we recorded testing for onboard, only 3 requested help navigating through this process.
Transparent with Data and Privacy
I knew from the onset due to the location-based nature of this app that transparency will be extremely important. The app clearly states how user’s data will be used when the permission is requested, and I designed extensive steps to ensure privacy, such as default location scrambling within a 2-mile radius to provide localized experience without transmitting precise location.
Modular Components for Fast Deployment
Buttons, input fields, animations and page layouts are modular so iterations of the app can be quickly deployed as we work with limited engineering resources. Making efficient design personable is one of the key challenges I took on.
🚧 The rest of this page is being built. Please check back soon.
