Designing a Ground-Breaking Mobile Application User Interface Designing a Ground-Breaking Mobile Application User Interface

Phillip Ndowu was getting his master's in music at Emory University in Atlanta. Inspired by a recent Adele interview where she mentioned an unreleased song from her album that’s 15 minutes long, Phillip had an idea. He wanted to create a platform unlike any other mainstream music application where musicians and artists can post exclusive content - songs, interviews, demos, notes – and fans can subscribe monthly for access. Users would also be able to purchase concert tickets through the platform, with the unique ability to opt for a virtual ticket. Philip reached out to us to bring his idea to life through a professional mobile application user interface.

During our first call with Phillip, it was important to us that we understood his vision and motivation behind the mobile application. We created a user flow to determine the number of screens that would be needed to incorporate the app’s key functionalities. 

From there, we put together a low, medium, and high fidelity example of a single screen to show Philip the options for design detail of the final prototype. Low fidelity would be faster for us to put together but less polished. The high-fidelity option – and the one chosen by Phillip – was close to the final design.

When it came time to create the mood boards, we wanted the app’s look to be as unique and innovative as Phillip’s idea. We gathered examples of music industry items such as amps, sound-dampening walls, microphones, etc., and examples of websites that matched the mood and tone of luxury that Phillip desired. One of our designers even went as far as to mock up a small section of a screen and an initial logo.

Phillip came into the project knowing that familiarity is one of the most critical aspects of user experience. We used wireframes to outline each screen's content and features and which specific actions the end-user would take. From finding and subscribing to an artist to purchasing a concert ticket, we wanted a seamless navigation experience. 

Our time spent on wireframes was an excellent opportunity to collaborate with Phillip and ensure we met his needs before moving forward.

Once we finalized wireframes, colors, typography, and branding, we got to work building out fully designed screens. We wanted to make our static screens look and behave as if they were a fully functional mobile application without using a developer. To do this, we used Figma, our design tool, to turn those screens into a clickable user interface – including artist videos using GIFs – that would provide a preview of the app’s intended functionalities.