Universal Music Group - WatchMusic
UMG wanted to create a new music service for its deep catalog of concert footage, documentaries, studio sessions, and interviews. They also wanted a new, 24/7 Live concert channel.
I can't say enough good things about the team on this project. Dave and Ben did an amazing job but so did Alex and Thomas. The work we did was supported by substantial qualitative and quantitive User Research conducted to validate the concept, ultimately including over 7k participants.
We conducted an extensive competitive analysis of dozens of direct and comparative tools. One of our most critical insights was the lack of innovation in the space. There was little differentiation between the many available options.
UMG wanted us to develop the brand. We worked on the logo, typography and created a simplified, yet bright palette that would highlight the content. We wanted a simple set of elements that would complement the rich visuals present in videos and artists pages. A person’s focus should be on viewing, rather than the interface.
Our solution was competitively unique because of the interaction design. “Buckets” in our mock-ups were placeholder labels for the many different kinds of content we would display. Simple configurations of various numbers of buckets were necessary to accommodate the available content. Each bucket had available content displayed on the playhead as thumbnails.
We expanded the playhead - incorporating visuals. We also targeted navigation of both related and time-based content.
The playhead became a mechanism to scroll ahead or back in time. Research suggested that people would "disappear down a rabbit hole" of content.
In the inset, the playhead displays past (2), present (1), and future (3) whether the user was searching or enjoying the content.
By expanding the playhead beyond a simple graphic, we removed interface, and focused on content - part of our design principles and the brand.
There were two primary modalities. The Live Channel would provide live streaming content from locations worldwide. The Catalog Channel, which would give music lovers concert footage, originals, sessions, documentaries, interviews, etc. Our palette marked major modality but the idea was to focus the user on the content where the brand color highlighted the modality.
When people settled on the content they wanted, the larger viewable content would appear, with a subtle animation of the other elements (the header/nav) easing up and off-screen, after a few seconds of play. This was easily invoked with activity on either mobile or desktop.
We incorporated numerous features and details including ticket purchase, playlists, etc. Here is an artist page with all of their related, available content.
IMPACT: This project became a major case study in Design-led work at McKinsey and served to demonstrate our capabilities across the firm.