About Renaissance

A mobile app used by over 300,000 music lovers worldwide. Enter exclusive artist giveaways for free, chat to friends whilst streaming music & get to know your streaming habits.

Tasks

My tasks for this redesign were to improve the functionality, the user-experience and do a complete overhaul of the app’s UI. Alongside this, I created a Steaming Party Webapp and social media marketing materials to promote the app.

Roles


Design Process

The redesign took 4 months and included a heuristic evaluation, competitor analysis, wireframing, redesigning the UI, creating a design system and handing off to the devs.


Heuristic Evaluation

As Renaissance wanted a full overhaul of the app, I decided to conduct a heuristic evaluation to uncover usability issues and problem areas.

After rating the heuristics out of severity, it was clear some of the main issues to focus on were; the structure of the app (IA) and the language used. 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.


Further Research

Given business constraints, it wasn’t possible to conduct research with users at this stage. Instead, I followed insights from my heuristic evaluation, competitor analysis, statistics from mix panel and previous knowledge of the app and users from past surveys.

Although qualitative research would have been great here, I conducted research with users at the first opportunity through a mixed method usability study after ideation.


Original Design

The original Renaissance design has core features such as; the ability to join streaming parties, view streaming statistics and earn stars to spend on giveaways. These features were well loved by users, so it was crucial to elevate key features and improve the look and feel of the app.


Low-Fidelity Wireframes

After a lot of brain storming, sketching and forward-thinking I created a bunch of low-fidelity wireframes to be discussed with the team.

One of the key changes I made was to have the profile menu on the top bar and a dedicated earnings and reward section on the bottom nav bar. The ability to earn rewards is super important to users and the business, so incorporating a common UX pattern that elevates this was essential.


Mid-Fidelity Wireframes


Usability Study

Originally, I'd planned to conduct moderated usability interviews. However we were unable to get interviewees in time, so I quickly pivoted to make sure we still got user insights.

I instead 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 to get a feel for usability.

Overall, we got great feedback from users, who were super excited to be involved in the redesign.


Moodboard

The responses from the usability study reassured us that despite a few small changes needed, users preferred the redesign. It was now time to focus on the UI overhaul, starting with finding inspiration from other music based apps.

When choosing colours, type face, buttons and other UI elements I considered W3C accessibility standards, the current Renaissance brand and other apps. I also needed to consider Spotify guidelines for buttons and components that contained Spotify content.


Preference Test

After landing on a design, I came up with 3 different colour palettes that focused on bringing a fresher, more modern look to the Renaissance brand. In order to get final feedback from users before handoff and to eliminate bias, I conducted a short preference test.

70 users responded to the preference test and a winner was chosen! 70% of users preferred option 1. Users also said the total stars progress wheel was confusing, so I came up with an alternative solution for this in the final design.


Final Design


Streaming Party

Search for Streaming Parties, join recommended, popular or parties ending soon, favourite upcoming parties or create your own.


Shop

Use your well earned stars on artist raffles & grand prizes! Not enough stars? Earn more by completing daily adventures, referring friends & streaming.


My Streams

What was once Favourites has now become My Streams! I created a flexible design allowing for more features and statistics


Webapp

I was challenged with designing the webapp from scratch in 24 hours... challenge accepted! It was essential that I included all party details, party chat and the streaming leaderboard.


Design System


Final Thoughts

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.

After the redesign, the app thrived with:

  • 750K+ organic downloads

  • 154K weekly partiers

  • 21 mins average daily time spent in-app

  • Really positive reviews from users on both the App Store and Play Store

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.