Keeping up with various forms of social media can be hard. Especially if you have a busy schedule and are looking for curated content. Independent record labels most of the time have a unique collective sound, and branding. Fans tend to not only follow artists, but entire labels themselves.

Yes, creating a separate social network for a label would be efficient however, that’s one more network for each artist and manager to keep up with. Instead, it seemed like a better idea to pull individual profiles and stream it on one timeline. So you’re getting all the content and posts you’re looking for, while meeting fans who have similar taste and interests. This can be very useful to an organization that curates special events and would rather the word spread via personal interaction vs. mass marketing as the content being showcased if for true fans.

Teams conceptualize ideas everyday. But are they actually useful? How will the users and target audience interact with the product, how do we validate ideation? Research, research, research. I found a dense concentration of the target group (college students) and interviewed about 100 people in person. I used a digital survey I created on Typeform and gave my device to the person being interviewed. These were the results:

Most students seemed to be interested in direct notifications from their favorite artists as well as meeting new people with the same tastes.

Creating a network of fans not only strengthens overall engagement, but aids in marketing as meetups and groups will notify each other of upcoming events. This networking tool also allows diverse artists to connect partitioned fragments of their fanbase to niche content within the label. New artists will also have access to the existing resources and networking groups.

Testing designs and iterations proved essential in researching which user flows worked best.

The results from user interaction research with low fidelity wireframes highlighted a problem: Iconography. I learned from the test results that some of the icon placement and symbols were confusing. Users needed a clearer indicator of the networking [sub-niche] button versus a duplicate.

The high fidelity prototypes were created with Figma. I chose a flat/material design approach: I wanted to add depth and highlight dominant buttons.