VIMIV was conceptualized with visual artist Stephanie Overs and music producer David Truong (Kwzé) as an online platform for audio and visual artists to exhibit their work.
Customisable, user-friendly and intimate, VIMIV is centred around the “aesthetic experience” between the audience and the artist.
VIMIV brings the concept of an online music profile to an immersive personal environment, as users are able to fully customise the look and feel of their individual profile pages completely within the VIMIV mobile application itself. Here, users may edit and upload content directly from their devices to their VIMIV profile, so viewers can stream this content anywhere at any time.
VIMIV is not just another SoundCloud or Bandcamp.
VIMIV's customisability sets it apart from other sound streaming services and artist promotion platforms. Targeted primarily towards content makers, VIMIV's user-friendly interface allows artists to present their work, and themselves, in a way that corresponds with their own artistic vision.
INFORMATION GATHERING
In order to develop a useable product, optimise user interaction and reach our user experience goals, we discovered a user-centred design process would be most helpful for VIMIV. So, research in the fields of Interaction, User Interface and User Experience design was conducted in order for VIMIV to reach our user experience goals. We found Donald Norman's Design Principles and Jakob Nielsen's Usability Heuristics especially helpful.
THE PROCESS
PRODUCT GOALS
After much discussion, we documented and agreed on 5 key product goals and features;
- Artists and content creators are our target early adopters
- So, the focus of VIMIV is primarily on the artist and their exhibition
- Customisability for the artist is paramount
- Communication for the sake of communication is to be eliminated (e.g. comments and likes) as this is not in line with VIMIV's goals of being primarily an aesthetic experience
- The user interface must support artists and extend users' experience in an effective and enjoyable manner
DESIGNING THE INTERACTION
Developing a set of wireframes has been immensely helpful not only in illustrating how interaction with our system will work, but also in highlighting any inconsistencies between each group member's mental model of what they imagined VIMIV to look and feel like.
Shown is a very early pre-wireframe sketch which raised some very important questions which had been overlooked;
Brand Identity
As a team we iterated through many product name possibilities, with a core theme of wantinga 'V' to stand for 'Video', and an 'M' to stand for music. After many scribbles, VIMIV the name appeared out of an illogical number written in roman numerals. We enjoyed the aesthetic of VIMIV being a nonsense palindrome resembling a sine wave, and we also felt that the I could represent the user's identity.
Below is a small sample of product logos we developed before settling on our final design.
PITCH
The required deliverable was a 3 minute video pitch, which can be viewed below.
