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Designing a community-driven music app for fans and emerging artists

Fankee is a platform that empowers electronic dance music (EDM) enthusiasts to directly contribute to the success of their favorite songs and artists. By allowing users to purchase ownership stakes in tracks, Fankee creates a unique opportunity for music lovers to become active participants in the growth and promotion of the songs they love.

Fankee app home screen displaying new album covers in a swipeable carousel.Fankee mobile app screen showing the music player view with a nicely cut album cover
Client
Fankee
Industry
Music
Service
UI/UX Design+ UX Research
Team Setup
1 Designer+ 1 Researcher
Timeline
4 weeks

Goal

Designing for Fankee required a careful consideration of three core aspects: the community, the listening experience, and the promoting experience. Our goal was to create a cohesive platform that seamlessly integrated these elements while emphasizing the central role of the community in connecting music lovers and artists.

Challenge

The main challenge was to translate a complex business model to an easy to understand and intuitive experience for users. By separating the listening and promoting experiences into distinct states within the music player, we ensured that users could easily navigate between the listening and promoting aspects of the platform.

Outcome

We successfully created a solid design that effectively addressed the app's main functionality and critical user flows. The testing sessions provided valuable insights and feedback, which we incorporated into the design to ensure that it met the needs and expectations of the target users.

14
Design iteration
2
Testing rounds
1
Full app redesign
Project timeline
Timeline of the Fankee project, showing 4 weeks from ideation to prototyping, iteration and usability testing in the last two weeks.
1 /
Discovery

How we started

We began the project with a kickoff session to thoroughly understand the product idea, the problem it aimed to solve, and the primary value it would provide to users.

How we collaborated with the client ‍

Due to the project's short timeline, we maintained daily communication with the Fankee team and held two extended weekly sessions to dive deeper into the designs.
Figjam  for planning workshopsWhatsApp for communicationFigma for creating design solutions

  1. Figjam  for planning workshops
  2. WhatsApp for communication
  3. Figma for creating design solutions
2 /
Design and iterations

Following the kickoff session, we immediately started reviewing the gathered information and creating the initial wireframes.

How Fankee works

Fankee introduces an innovative approach to bridge the gap between artists and their fans. For two weeks before a song’s release, it’s exclusively available on Fankee, allowing fans to discover new talent and invest in songs they believe in by purchasing up to 10 percent ownership at a base price.

After the pre-release, the track debuts on major platforms, and ownership value grows as streams and shares increase.  Fans can hold their stakes or sell them back to Fankee at a higher value within 30 days, offering flexibility and potential profits, while fostering a stronger artist-fan community.

Wireframe prepared for the Fankee app.

Community aspect

We recognized that the community aspect was the heart of Fankee, and it needed to clear in every facet of the user experience. To achieve this, we designed features and interactions that fostered a sense of belonging, collaboration, and shared purpose among users.

Screenshot of a Fankee community mobile app page. The page features top creators, user-generated content, and playlists. The community section displays song comments, ownership shares, and user interactions.

Listening and promoting experience

To address the challenge of designing for both the listening and promoting experiences, we created a consistent and intuitive interface for exploring and engaging with new release songs. The music player was designed with two distinct states, each tailored to a specific aspect of the user experience.

State 1 -Listening experience:

  1. A clean and immersive interface designed to focus on the track’s cover art and simple music controls.
  2. A clean and immersive interface designed to focus on the track’s cover art and simple music controls.
  3. This state allowed users to enjoy the music without distractions, creating a seamless listening environment.

State 2 - Buying and Promoting Experience:

  1. Optimized to display key metrics, such as the number of interactions and streams the song had received.
  2. Highlighted content created by the artist using the song, offering users a deeper understanding of the song's impact and reach.
Fankee app's listening experience showing track player with album cover and statistics on the song's performance

We addressed the challenge of designing for both the listening and promoting experiences by creating a cohesive and user-friendly interface that supported the core functionality of the Fankee platform.

The consistent design language and intuitive controls made it easy for users to switch between states and engage with the music in the way that best suited their needs and interests.

Techniques

  1. Wireframing
  2. User flow analysis
3 /
Final screens

After multiple rounds of ideations and iterations and 2 rounds of test sessions, we delivered an easy-to-use, understandable, and engaging MVP version of the product. We achieved a solid design where the app's main functionality and critical user flows were well-received by users.

As Fankee had an existing brand identity, we carefully integrated their branding guidelines into the final screen designs. This ensured a consistent visual language throughout the app, reinforcing brand recognition and creating a cohesive user experience.

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