Role
UX Designer
The Team
2 UX designers
1 engineer
1 data scientist
Timeline
Sep 2024 - May 2025
Tools
Figma, Figjam
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Nurturing Connections between Artists and Listeners
Interlude is a music-centered social platform that redefines discovery by connecting listeners with emerging artists through authentic, community-driven engagement.
Artists can share their music and stories to grow a dedicated fanbase, while listeners engage in authentic, bias-free discovery beyond the mainstream.
Interlude
THE PROBLEM
Difficulties in Visibility and Artistic Expression
My capstone team and I set out to explore the challenges emerging artists face in breaking into the music industry and building a dedicated listener base. In today’s landscape, popular social media platforms and streaming algorithms consistently push already well-established artists, leaving little room for new voices to be heard. As a result, emerging artists struggle to reach audiences in ways that feel authentic to their identity and craft.
This imbalance highlights a pressing need for platforms that prioritize visibility, community, and genuine artist–listener connection.
THE CHALLENGE
⚡
How might we support emerging artists in expanding their audience while fostering authentic connections through intentional music discovery?
OUR SOLUTION
INTERLUDE —
A Platform that Amplifies Discovery and Artist Voices
To support a genuine connection between artists and listeners, we decided that Interlude needed to be a two-way application. We researched and iterated our designs based on valuable feedback from both smaller artists and music listeners before settling on a final iteration for our capstone.
Artist-Facing Application
Artists have a dedicated space to showcase their music and share the stories behind their creative processes in ways that are authentic to themselves.
Listener-Facing Application
Listeners can organically discover new music and artists through an unbiased inverse recommendation algorithm that prioritizes content from smaller emerging artists.
ARTIST-FACING
A Variety of Post Categories
Artists are able to upload their music and create posts about their music and themselves. Beyond song-specific content, artists can share behind-the-scenes updates, curated playlists, live events, and merchandise details. Through these posts, artists broaden their presence and share richer, more personal stories that invite deeper connections with listeners.
Post categories
Add music flow
Add live event flow
Comprehensive Artist Profiles
Customized to their liking, an artist's profile is a dedicated space that showcases all of an artist's uploaded content, highlighting not just their music, but their posts and who they are as a person. Additionally, artists are able to check their analytics to keep track of their growth.
Artist profile
Artist analytics
Music Pages
Music pages are an area for artists to upload song-specific content such as the story behind the music, any demos, and related videos. Apart from artistic freedom, this is where listeners can learn more about the creative processes behind each song.
Music page
LISTENER-FACING
Personalized Daily Song Recommendations
Listeners are given 5 daily song recommendations that are located at the top of their home feed, making discovery easy and immediately accessible. While listening to each recommendation, users are able to give lightweight feedback on the mini-player. Submitted feedback contribute to Interlude's unique inverse recommendation system which prioritizes songs from lesser-known artists rather than songs from mainstream artists.
Daily recommendations
Mini-player & feedback
Discovery of Live Event Opportunities
Within the search feature of Interlude, listeners can find live events that will occur near their current location. This encourages discovering and supporting emerging artists in person, cultivating a more personal connection and the growth of a dedicated fanbase.
Live events
A Curated Home Feed
Besides the daily song recommendations at the top, the home feed for listeners is curated through friends' pinned songs and content posted by artists and reposted by friends. These three main sections support the discovery and exploration of emerging artists' music and content through personal connections.
Listeners' home feed
THE IMPACT
Anticipation and High Expectations
Our capstone aimed to enhance the artist-listener relationship through a unique social-centered music application. From our usability tests with both music artists and listeners, we gathered some early positive feedback:
"I like that I can share a lot more than just my music, and not have to worry about gaming an algorithm."
- Artist
"It’s a nice way of humanizing the artist, reminding people that their songs are about their personal experiences."
- Listener
This is a good indicator that our design is adequately addressing user needs in terms of authentically reaching out to an audience as an artist, and discovering niche songs/artists as a listener.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
🎨
Now, let's jump into the design process!
Interlude caters to both artists and listeners, and in order to craft the best experiences possible, we wanted to deep dive into the wants and needs for both. Consequently, our design process is two-fold.
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
We analyzed existing platforms within the music discovery space to understand how they do or do not support the relationship between emerging artists and listeners. From this analysis, I identified features and user flows that could make Interlude feel fluid and familiar, while also differentiating it with distinct and unique elements.
Direct Competitors
Platforms that focus on music streaming and discovery, influencing how artists reach listeners.
Indirect Competitors
Platforms that address adjacent needs such as live events, fan engagement, or social sharing.
User Interviews
In total, we conducted 20 semi-structured user interviews with emerging artists, listeners, and industry stakeholders to gain valuable insights about music reach and the connection between artists and their fanbase.
6 Emerging Artists
…discussed promoting music, building audiences, and how rec systems influence artist visibility and growth.
11 Music Listeners
…shared how they find new music, the tools they use, and what drives them to engage with lesser-known artists.
3 Industry Stakeholders
…disclosed their perspectives on artist development and exposure
Key Findings🔎
From our initial research, three core themes consistently emerged:
1.
Recommendation System Bias
Current and conventional recommendation systems prioritize established artists over new voices.
2.
Losing Authenticity for Virality
The pressure to go viral frequently forces artists to sacrifice their authenticity.
3.
A Shared Desire for Personal Connection
Artists seek authentic expression, while listeners seek deeper personal connections.
IDEATION
Information Architecture
Before moving into design brainstorming, we prioritized features based on key insights. We then created sitemaps for both the artist- and listener-facing apps to establish a clear structure to guide our design process.
Information architecture/sitemap for the artist-facing application
Sketches
Through a collaborative effort, my team and I all sketched different user flows based on our preliminary research and our information architecture. These sketches helped us visualize and build a foundation for our wireframes.
BUILDING AND TESTING
Usability Testing and Design Iterations
Between design iterations, I conducted usability testing of the mid- and high-fidelity prototypes with 10 listeners and 5 artists. Below are three major design decisions that were informed from the usability test findings.
Artist Create Post Flow
Before
Artists didn't realize they could tag a specific song to a post until halfway through the flow
They also were not sure if tagging a song was required for every post
After
Posting to a song-specific page is made immediately clear and separate from sharing something about general about the artist
No longer confusing whether each post needs to tag a specific song
Qualitative Feedback System
Before
After
Listeners did not feel encouraged to give feedback/felt it was too hidden
The action was too similar to adding the song to a music streaming application
The feedback questions and answer options felt more personal and caring
Qualitative feedback system was more detailed and helpful in curating recommended songs
Live Events Tab
Before
After
Users felt the notifications was already similar to the home feed which features artist and friends' activities
Listeners reported that the live events page felt too hidden for it to be an important feature
The notifications tab was replaced with a live events tab on the navigation bar
Notifications was moved to the home page next to DMs for a more intuitive placement
Establishing the Design System for Consistency
To maintain visual consistency across our growing interface and streamline collaboration, I developed a design system that unified color, typography, layout, and components across the app. The design system features Interlude's brand colors of purple and pink as well as state variations of certain components that will simplify designing between iterations and developing the MVP.
THE MVP: MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT
Building through Cross-functional Collaboration
Additionally, we successfully deployed a functional web app MVP, guided by my designs, design system, and close collaboration across data and engineering. I worked closely with our engineer to align on technical feasibility and ensure seamless implementation of key features. With our data scientist, I co-designed the onboarding flow that informed the recommendation system based on initial user preferences, as well as a qualitative feedback mechanism to help refine future recommendations.
Onboarding
Home feed
Search
Upload song
REFLECTIONS
Stay Anchored to Core Needs ⚓
When building a 0-to-1 product, it is easy to get carried away by a endless list of possibilities. In spite of that, my team and I had to constantly check our rationale derived from user needs, the technical feasibility of additional features, and alignment with our product vision by identifying "nice-to-haves" and prioritizing the implementation of essential features. This helped me stay focused on the goals we set out for Interlude.
Lead with Empathy 🤗
At the beginning of this project, I found myself making assumptions about what both listeners and artists needed because well, I was an avid music listener and I knew what I would like in a product about discovering and connecting with music artists. However, I constantly touched base with listeners, artists, and industry stakeholders through user interviews and usability tests to confirm hypotheses and discover additional pain points which was incredibly helpful in guiding me through the design process.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Enriching an Influential Community
If given more time, I would love to explore how to give the users of Interlude a more social/community experience. We have currently addressed how artists can authentically present their work and how listeners can discover emerging artists through an inverse recommendation system and through their home feed. I think we can definitely lean more into the community aspect since it is the gateway for a strong, connected fanbase as well as a powerful source of discovery.
THE PEOPLE
Shoutout to My Team 🙌
And of course, thank you to my team for this amazing experience!
Made with love and lots of nova lox bagels (๑•ᴗ•๑)
Design is better together — let's connect! 🤝
Resume