VOCALO MUSIC APP
I collaborated with marketing students to promote Vocalo, a public media service geared towards millennials. Our campaign included the updated version of the app with new features.
Tools I Used Illustrator, Invision
How Long It Took 6 months
Project Type Client: Vocalo.org
My Role UI/ Interaction Designer
Background Vocalo is what commercial radio isn't; it's real talk, real music and real Chicago. It is a non- commercial, independent radio station from the windy city and puts its natives first by giving a voice to those who enrich their Chicago community socially and musically. Along with playing a mix of local and independent Hip-Hop, R&B, Dance & Indie Rock music, it hosts talk shows such as Miscellaneous Monday, Feminists Wednesday, Critic for a Minute Friday and many more.
Our Roles For this project, I was grouped with four marketing students to launch an advertising campaign that would bring more awareness to Vocalo. Since the target audience for this radio station is millennials, we were the perfect team to do the job. In addition to a new marketing strategy, we also proposed a redesign for the Vocalo app, which included an updated look and new features. As an interactive arts student, my role was to focus on the app, by creating wireframes, prototypes and storyboarding possible features it would have.
Team Objectives In our campaign strategy, we decided to focus on three main points:
1. To build overall awareness throughout Chicago and the surrounding region.
2. Build awareness among Chicago Millennials.
3. Develop an interactive & engaging digital/street campaign that speaks to target segment.
Branding When creating the high fidelity prototypes for the Vocalo App, I wanted to stay true to the Vocalo branding and colors of yellow, purple and red. To give the app modern finish, I felt that the images of albums needed to be large and icons should be rounded.
It's the Little Things As a millennial, I felt that it was important to include features and interactions Vocalo app users would appreciate. Throughout this project, I really wanted to show that simple quirks like logging with social media accounts, or having the ability to customize or personalize anything can make a big difference in an experience of using a device. To me, it shows the importance of user centered design and how it can change the way people see a company or organization.
Yay more things :)
SWOT/User Personas As research, my team and I did a SWOT analysis on Vocalo, which highlighted the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats it had to give us a better understanding of how we should approach this advertising plan. We also created user personas of our target audience; hip, urban millennials.
Milennials Love Smartphones and Experiences
Through our research we also became aware that:
1. Seven out of ten millennials experience FOMO, driving them to show up, share and engage.
2. Eight in ten millennials attend or participate in a variety of experiences like parties, festivals or performing arts.
3. Millennials spend 90 hours per month on smartphone apps alone.
Vocalo + Experiences + App Update
Since millennials need experiences and use their phones to connect, engage and express their thoughts and interests, we broke down the campaign strategy in four steps with focusing on aspects like creating more events, and taking advantage of social media:
1. Build general awareness on the street using guerilla tactics
2. Engage target audience with events
3. Use social media to keep the story going
4. Update App
App Update
To revamp Vocalo, me and my team felt that it was important to update the app to fully engage millennials. As an interactive student, I felt that the app needed to center around key objectives that are listed below:
1. Includes the same look/feel, but with updated features.
2. Updated app will be incorporated into events
3. New update includes: album cover visuals, favoriting feature, separate recently played list.
To create an app that millennials would use, I also felt the update needed to have different logging in/ sign up options that could be integrated with social media. Since millennials are avid social media users, they should have the option to login/sign up with Facebook, Twitter, etc. In addition, considering that users respond better to customization, I designed that update to also give users the option to filter their playlists, feeds according to what they wanted to hear. As shown below, users can mark if their interested in listening to Vocalo Radio, podcasts, curated playlists, etc. In addition to live radio, users would also have the ability to search for music, listen to curated music playlist (made by the staff) and favorite tracks.
Screens
