Product Design

Band Memos

Mobile Design, iOS Development

Background

Band Memos is an app that helps musicians collaborate more easily with one-another. The app allows a musician to record ideas with their phone, and instantly sync those audio files to the cloud and with band members, much like Dropbox or Google Drive.

UX Research

Several years ago I was frustrated by the difficulty of collaborating with my band members. I began working on an idea for a collaboration tool. I sent out a survey to bands on Craigslist and Facebook. These bands ranged greatly in fanbase size, from tens to millions. Questions on the survey included:

What percentage of your time is spent writing original music? Have you ever recorded yourself playing music? What physical equipment do you use to record yourself playing music? What software do you use to record yourself playing music?

I wanted to know whether my behaviors were typical. I found that most musicians recorded rough ideas with their phones and emailed them or used Dropbox to share. So I began working on a more interated solution specifically for musicians that eliminated the need for multiple apps.

Once I had wire frames, I used the POP (Prototyping on Paper) app to guerilla test a few screens with friends.

I also conducted a competitive analysis with existing solutions. Most of these solutions were geared towards public collaboration with strangers. I assessed these platforms as well as messaged some of their users to understand mental models around collaboration.

UX Design

I did numerous iterations on the original concept in Adobe Illustrator. Because I was also coding the app, I also iterated on the concept in Xcode's storyboards.

I had tons of ideas for Band Memos, but I reduced the app down to a couple core concepts: record audio, share audio privately, sync audio to the cloud.

The app is not finished. I am currently coding it in Swift. This will likely be a long-term hobby project.

Visual Design

I did all graphic design for the user-interface as well as branding (except iconography in the UI).

Three screenshots of the Band Memos user interface on a mobile device