UX & UI Design + Art Direction
UX & UI Design + Art Direction
In early 2015 I was brought into a small group of professionals that were looking for mobile focused strategy and UX design thinking. I jumped into the discovery process cultivating the original vison of the founder to create a platform to view, rate and share new indie film content.
The biggest hurdle I faced was learning about the indie film industry and some of the motivations of its creators. Luckily for me I had a longtime filmmaker friend who was glad to meet and answer any initial questions I had. Meeting with the founder numerous times helped me digest the industry from his perspective and revise some promising critical path’s and user journey’s I had developed. Knowing at the onset one of the biggest hurdles to overcome was generating a robust user base I embarked on a research marathon and presented a long list of effective strategies to the founder. One of the successful strategies he employed was a podcast he still produces meant to generate excitement for the brand’s projects and its app.
I was given a single page of his unanswered questions about the app experience as well as the founder’s investor pitch deck to review and derive insights from. I put together a competitive analysis of other Indi film based digital experiences and what they were doing successfully. Further analysis regarding successful app revenue streams were looked into and partnerships with local Indi film groups were encouraged. I set up interviews with local film producers and fans alike and built key personas based on the user interview results.
During numerous meetings, we came to a solid mobile app architecture and organized a website concept supporting the brand and app. After a quick wireframing session I started work on a prototype that would be shown at that year’s SXSW event.
I designed one user journey prototype execution using InVision after exploring multiple UI design directions. I wasn’t able to attend the SXSW event that year but was told people were really receptive to and excited for the final app to come to fruition.
From the simple start of the project to handing off the final designs this project ran the entire UX creative process gambit. The founder was always open to new ideas and felt comfortable bouncing his ideas off the team as well. In the end the prototype was a success at SXSW, and Lower Boom’s owner was able to elevate his brand within the local film community.
