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Overview & Scope
Year
Client
Services
Role
Tools
🔍 The Challenge
Independent music creators struggle to find meaningful ways to collaborate online. Existing tools support production but lack strong community-building features, intuitive UX, and mobile accessibility. How might we create a platform that empowers musicians to easily connect, collaborate, and create music together—whether across town or across the world?
💡 The Idea
Muse is a mobile-first platform designed for musicians to meet, match, and make music. It goes beyond just music creation—Muse builds community. Think Tinder meets SoundCloud, but for collaborative artists. The vision: a powerful hub for ideation, track sharing, and live or remote collaboration.
🎯 Goals & Objectives
• Create a mobile-first platform for music collaboration.
• Provide smart matching features based on genre, style, and goals.
• Enable artists to co-create tracks with intuitive feedback tools.
• Build a social feed that supports discovery, promotion, and connection.
👥 Target Audience
Artists ages 18–55 who are:
• Tech-savvy musicians looking to grow and collaborate.
• Producers, vocalists, and instrumentalists with eclectic tastes.
• Creators who value accessibility, productivity, and artistic synergy.
🔬 Research & Discovery
During the research phase of this project, I chose a few methods that would help me understand the overall objective and hone in on my user in order to create a more user-centric experience. Through a mix of SWOT, Competitive, and user persona and journey creation, I gained insight into how Muse might be viable to the user.
• SWOT Analysis
• User Personas & Journeys
• Competitive Analysis (Trackd, Soundtrap, Avid, Pibox)
🧠 Personas
Three distinct personas guided design decisions:
🎧 Hangakore (Producer/DJ)
Wants efficient tools without clutter. Seeks serious collaborators.
🎙 Maria José (Singer/Songwriter)
Desires global and local collaborators with similar musical taste.
🎸 Lacara (Guitarist)
Not very tech-savvy. Needs a simple way to build her music network.
Lets take you through what Lacara might experience when navigating Muse:
User Journey
Lacara Jones — Guitarist/Singer
Goal: Start a new music collaboration with like-minded artists
🌱 Stage 1: Discovery & Exploration
Lacara is browsing for new artists with the hope of starting a fresh collaboration. At this stage, her emotions are tentative but hopeful, curious to see if she’ll find someone who shares her style.
• Thought: “Wish there was an artist with the same interests in mind.”
• Opportunity: The Muse app presents the Co-Match feature, which piques her interest by promising intelligent pairing based on genre and collaboration goals.
⚡ Stage 2: Match & Engage
As she starts exploring the Co-Match results, Lacara’s confidence grows. She finds a potential collaborator with similar musical tastes and starts initiating a project.
• Thought: “Wow! Looks like I found someone who is just as inspired as me.”
• Opportunity: The machine learning-powered matching feature offers high compatibility, helping Lacara envision the creative potential of this partnership.
🚀 Stage 3: Creation Begins
She enters the collaboration space, where she and her new partner start working on a track. With features like track commenting and visual waveform editing, the creative process feels natural and energizing.
• Thought: “Time to figure out how we’ll mesh in this collaboration. This rocks!”
• Opportunity: Muse provides a frictionless start-to-finish creation experience, supporting real-time feedback and media sharing within the app.
📊 Emotional Flow & Experience
The graph illustrates a gradual rise in emotional satisfaction across the journey. While Stage 1 starts with uncertainty (blue dip), Lacara’s confidence and joy increase significantly in Stage 2 and peak in Stage 3 (highlighted in pink). This shift suggests that the app effectively transforms skepticism into inspiration through thoughtful design.
💬 Summary
Lacara’s journey highlights how important intelligent artist matching, easy onboarding, and collaborative creation tools are to the success of Muse. Her experience exemplifies how the app empowers independent musicians to move from searching to creating—without missing a beat.
🧪 Usability Testing
Low-Fidelity Testing:
3 users tested onboarding, Co-Match, and collaboration features. Feedback included:
• Co-Match button was too hidden.
• Onboarding needed to show app value earlier.
• Suggested improvements: genre tags, previewing full music catalogs, clearer flow.
High-Fidelity Testing:
Incorporated feedback into a refined prototype:
• Improved spacing, font clarity, and UI hierarchy.
• Enhanced collaboration screen with better track overview and annotation tools.
• Streamlined onboarding and genre selection process.
Information Architecture was mapped to include:
• Collab Dashboard
• Artist Explorer
• Profile Customization
• Notifications & Messaging
🎨 Visual Identity
To start on the visual design phase, I created a mood board to help me visualize what colors, elements, and language Muse will be inspired by. I wanted something dark, sleek, and have an electrifying or radiating mood. I felt that the colors and elements needed to feel bright and invigorating but also have a dark theme tied to its electrifying accents.
Moodboard Themes: dark, sleek, electrifying
My choice of typography involved me picking something wide, and future-esque, but also convey open-ness and friendliness. I thought I needed something of this caliber in order to create stand out headers. I used Druk Wide because it reminded me of when I used to use cassette players and Walkmans.
Avant Garde Gothic was my secondary for smaller headers and paragraphs. It's a very clean and modern sans-serif that also has a future-esque appeal.
Typography: Druk Wide & Avant Garde Gothic
Using wordlists help me associate and connect creative concepts into Muse. In this process I quickly went through some words in a spit-ball fashion in order to come up with something that related to how Muse should feel.
The right color is key to making an aesthetically pleasing design. I choose five colors that all have complimentary and almost primary-like aesthetic.
Lastly, my logo sketches were made to help me quickly conceptualize Muse identity and brand mark. I used a wavy 'M' to create a sound wave like symbol. After iterations of sketches I felt like the wave 'M' worked the best.
Wireframes + Sketches
Lofi Prototype
High fidelity mockups
🧠 Reflections & Learnings
• Importance of user flow clarity—especially for niche tools like music apps.
• Balance between functionality and fun in social creative platforms.
• Simplifying onboarding while emphasizing core value prop is essential.
• Users want trust-building tools: testimonials, project histories, and meaningful feedback.
✅ Outcome
Muse offers an elegant solution for musicians to co-create. The smart features—especially Co-Match and in-track commenting—offer what’s missing in the music-tech space: purposeful collaboration in a mobile-friendly, artist-first environment.
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