My first round of digital designs included features that focused a lot on personalisation, as well as my journey idea. I think i struggle with having too many ideas and trying to work them all into one project. Kyle helped me realise my journey concept was stronger, and to ditch the personalisation idea as this is heavily saturated already in most streamng apps.
My main drive for this idea was the fact that you may never hear your favourite song. I was thinking about this brief too personally and realistically you will never be able to listen to every song (sadly).
Looking at this now, despite being unfinished, i can see how the master apprentice activites have greatly improved my design skills.
you cant make a 90s app and have rounded buttons. its simply wrong. I came to this conclusion after looking at some actual websites from the 90s. rounded buttons/ rounded edges in general are very modern and totally threw off my original designs. I knew they looked bad, but i couldn’t put my finger on why. Research really is so so important as these were my attempts amidst only doing research into MODERN day streaming/learning apps. This pushed me to do some 90s website/app/magazine design.
I spent literal HOURS designing the road/ subway features. After some reflection i realised i was putting way too much time into something that should have never been my main concern. Although users may enjoy visually pleasing graphics, thats not why they would be using an app of this nature. This is when i really took a step back and re-evaluated the main values of my app.
page of main values
Since people would be using this app to learn about the 90s hip hop era, i decided to focus on my main goal: how to present information in an engaging way that makes learning exciting, whilst also serving the core purpose of being easy to use and navigate.