Rapchr
Product Design
Brand Design
A vast music community exists without a centralized platform to engage in constructive debate and no objective quantifiable metrics to bolster the position that an artist is ‘good’. Hence Rapchr, a social & analytics based platform designed to be a breathing reflection of musicianship prowess consensus #fortheculture. The primary objective of this platform is to engage new age and old school audiences around a collective appreciation for music while quantifying metrics based on artist skillset.
For Rapchr I created a new identity from the ground up; something that felt modern, clean and ethnic, while incorporating a gentle nod to the past with the humble Vinyl record. This was followed by research and two major rounds of product design iteration, a beta then alpha.
The beta was designed to house key functionality that enabled artist discovery, community building and healthy debate. This beta has been testing with a set of 200+ users for a little over a year. Of recent, an alpha was retroactively designed to launch a simplified interface to a broader audience. It is inclusive of top tasks uncovered from the beta which placed an emphasis on viewing artist stats and rating.
Live Prototype (built by me) 👇🏾👇🏾
Alpha Platform UI
The design of Rapchr's alpha began with the question, "How might we consolidate the top tasks for which users visit Rapchr in a single interface?" To solution, I proposed a design to overlay the sign up/account creation flows over top the main dashboard content. Users edit the key pieces of metadata needed to support the experience through this flow before accessing the main interface which displays a curated set of featured artists, their corresponding skill rating statistics, and a sidebar to contribute to the community by individually rate these skillsets.
Beta Platform UI | Artist + User Detail Pages
Several comps depicting key features of the Rapchr experience. The Artist Detail pages displays skills as ranked by the community alongside discography and biography details. The User Profile page contains both 'Current' and 'All-time' Top 5 lists that someone has selected and their latest public messages/debates within the community
Community Timeline UI
A 3-panel timeline page that expands as a user drills into the details of each post and the preview the profiles of those in the community. The desktop design transitions seamlessly to the mobile breakpoint where each panel is an individual screen users can easily toggle between.
The timeline feature is designed to foster healthy organized debate. Tags are used to map comments to individual artists, genre, skill, and type.
Sign Up Flow / Create Account UI
Users provide basic account info and select their 'Top 5' favorite artists which is displayed throughout the platform UI and can be edited at any time.
too long; didn't read?
(No problem. We’re all busy folks. Here’s me in a nutshell.)
1) Name: I'm Shade. Pronounced "Shah-day".
2) Location: Washington D.C.
3) Superpowers: Inclusive Multi-cultural UX, Mentorship
4) Fun Fact: I'm a travel micro-influencer ( IG: @fola.shade )
5) YOE: 8 years across UX Research + Product Design.
Past Clients include:
- National Science Foundation [NSF]
- Dept of Education [Office of Adult Education & Literacy]
- Cargill US/India
- Halliburton
- Sprint
- Boys & Girls Club
- Aetna
- Whole Foods Market
- Wal-Mart
