NAPSTER

The directive… Design a brand new application and launch it simultaneously across Android, IPhone & Windows platforms - while adding the much needed features in order to stay competitive in the ever growing market of streaming music.

I realized this is a dream opportunity to design a family of products… catering to an industry that I love.

Cloud computing has rapidly revolutionized the music industry and the way digital music is being consumed. Rhapsody was the very first to do this. Napster had a similar product, but from underground market. Rhapsody had lost it's lead as a key innovator in this new streaming music industry. Upon purchasing Napster, we were challenged to completely abandon the first generation application and redesign the application to keep up with the quickly emerging competition.

My style guide paved the way for us to quickly be able to roll out the new application across all the platforms. I was able to translate Android to iPhone, Windows & television platforms easily with our established pattern UI designs… chunks of code with a naming convention that became our consistent language across each of the platforms…and all of the developers.

I was able to quickly call out page designs by way of this naming convention.

Once we had rolled out the new core applications across all the platforms, we then began to roll out new features as independent applications.

Leveraging our established style guides, I was able to manage supporting our current core applications while working with 3rd party development teams to roll out these feature add projects.

The concert application, from concept to finished application in the marketplace, was less than 3 months - a phenomenal turn around.

Car mode for our application was a natural progression - the music player at its most stripped down basics. This way we can minimize distracted drivers while enabling our customers to continue streaming their music in their everyday lifestyle.

Being the progressive development team that were were, we would have annual Rhap-a-thons. A 48hr hack-a-thon of designers and developers competing against each other to design the coolest app in 48hours time.

My team won with this Location tool real-time working prototype.