Rethinking the Renaissance experience
Did you know 61 million Spotify users are not consider music fans but music super fans?
Despite this, there isn’t a dedicated place for fans to connect to one another, or their favourite artists. This leaves fans spread out across forums, social networks and fragmented fan clubs.
Renaissance had a mission:
Create a community where music artists and their fans can connect and grow together.
Our app was aimed at users under 30, aligning with key audience insights. With 264 million Spotify listeners in this age group and 18-24s being the most active on social media, they were the most likely to engage with gamified experiences.
Our goal was to tap into this behavior, using music to build connection and community through challenges, leaderboards, and streaming parties.
Downloads doubled organically in 2 years
In my 2 years at Renaissance the organic downloads of the app went from 380k to over 790k, with no marketing spend.
After 90 days, 47% of our users actively used the app and the daily usage time increased from 19 minutes to 21 minutes.
A tiny team with big ambitions
Despite being a tiny team of 8, what we didn’t lack was passion, design thinking, or team collaboration.
I was the sole designer on the team and redesigned both of their products (music app and internal dashboard), implemented several new features, designed their webapp and redesigned their website.
The App redesign
The main purpose of this redesign was to elevate features users already loved and improve the look and feel of the app overall.
This involved extensive strategy and discovery research in order to understand what issues the app was currently facing and decide on how we wanted to move forward.
Timeframe:
4 months from discovery research to hand-off
Tools:
Figma, Procreate, Miro, Maze
Uncovering Usability Issues
To improve the app, I needed to uncover what frustrated users, including pain points, accessibility issues, and areas for growth.
To do this, I conducted a heuristic evaluation, analyzed key stats, and explored how competitors tackled similar challenges.
It was clear some of the main issues to focus on were;
The structure of the app
The language used
Features needed more value for users
There was a disconnect between how our target demographic (teens) communicate and the tone in the app.
This created friction rather than a fun, gamified experience.
Wireframing & prototyping
Next, it was time to brainstorm and sketch out ideas! I developed initial wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes before gathering feedback from the team.
A key change made: I moved the profile menu to the top bar and added an earnings & rewards section to the bottom nav. Since earning rewards is key for users and the business, using a familiar UX pattern was essential.
Testing & Incorporating feedback
I conducted a mixed-method survey which received 70 responses.
The survey contained a series of questions related to the new features and a preference test comparing 2 versions of the same screen.
The responses from the usability study reassured us that despite a few small changes needed, users really liked the redesign.
UI Redesign
Next, I focused on the UI overhaul, drawing inspiration from other music apps.
While choosing colours, typography, buttons, and other UI elements, I followed W3C accessibility standards, kept the Renaissance brand in mind, and considered Spotify’s guidelines for components with their content.
Finally, I created a style guide, design system and promotional graphics for social media.
Summary
I absolutely loved redesigning the Renaissance app! It was great to work with such an amazing team on something that people care about so much.
It was great to see ways that we could improve the app even further too, and have since tested and designed multiple features such as; virtual festivals, premium profile & a social media feed.
Final design
Search for Streaming Parties, join recommended, popular or parties ending soon, favourite upcoming parties or create your own.
Streaming Party
Use your well earned stars on artist raffles & grand prizes! Not enough stars? Earn more by completing daily adventures, referring friends & streaming.
Shop
What was once Favourites has now become My Streams! I created a flexible design allowing for more features and statistics
My Streams
After redesigning the app, I was challenged to design the web app from scratch in 24 hours - challenge accepted ✅
Fun fact:
Thanks for reading! ☀︎