The Challenge
My role in Blastbeat was to create a vision and implement a strategy for the online element of the business. The solution had to allow multiple stakeholders (parents, youth, internal staff, educators and media) to interact with the business, grow the number of schools taking part in the program and deliver a superb user experience.
A key part of the online aspect of the business was the requirement to build out a social network for our community, allowing members to interact online, share and create digital content and relive the gig experiences at our network of offline events.
The challenge was this had to be built with very little funding and to an extremely tight timescale.
The Solution
Prior to receiving funding our resources were extremely stretched. I was tasked with deploying a simple social network which would show potential investors the proof of concept.
To achieve this I found an off the shelf social network platform called Dolphin created by Boonex. As funding was extremely tight I hired some contract designers to reskin this application and provide some basic social networking functionality.
The result was BlastSpace.com and it was the final piece of the offering which allowed us to raise the start up capital required to build out and expand our business.
Post funding we were able to hire a full time designer and full time developer and built out a bespoke social network designed especially for our community.
The design process was user centric and we took care to involve our community in every stage of the build. User focus groups were setup to analyse the existing branding and from there a new identity was created.
Our community was involved at each stage of the design process and gave valuable feedback into how the site should look and feel, the information architecture of the platform and the desired feature set.
Once the identity was agreed, wireframes and interactive prototypes were built and feedback gathered from our users prior to build.
Post build we setup frequent informal feedback sessions with a selection of our users along with an online feedback loop where site visitors were able to report on bugs, features they wanted to see in the site and usability issues.
My role in Blastbeat was to create a vision and implement a strategy for the online element of the business. The solution had to allow multiple stakeholders (parents, youth, internal staff, educators and media) to interact with the business, grow the number of schools taking part in the program and deliver a superb user experience.
A key part of the online aspect of the business was the requirement to build out a social network for our community, allowing members to interact online, share and create digital content and relive the gig experiences at our network of offline events.
The challenge was this had to be built with very little funding and to an extremely tight timescale.
The Solution
Prior to receiving funding our resources were extremely stretched. I was tasked with deploying a simple social network which would show potential investors the proof of concept.
To achieve this I found an off the shelf social network platform called Dolphin created by Boonex. As funding was extremely tight I hired some contract designers to reskin this application and provide some basic social networking functionality.
The result was BlastSpace.com and it was the final piece of the offering which allowed us to raise the start up capital required to build out and expand our business.
Post funding we were able to hire a full time designer and full time developer and built out a bespoke social network designed especially for our community.
The design process was user centric and we took care to involve our community in every stage of the build. User focus groups were setup to analyse the existing branding and from there a new identity was created.
Our community was involved at each stage of the design process and gave valuable feedback into how the site should look and feel, the information architecture of the platform and the desired feature set.
Once the identity was agreed, wireframes and interactive prototypes were built and feedback gathered from our users prior to build.
Post build we setup frequent informal feedback sessions with a selection of our users along with an online feedback loop where site visitors were able to report on bugs, features they wanted to see in the site and usability issues.
The Original BlastSpace.com built on the Boonex Dolphin platform.
Design Phase:One of the original design iterations.Note the new identity and logo.
Design Phase:The second homepage design iteration.This design was the preferred iteration internally however our community found it 'too clean' and 'not dirty enough'
Design Phase:This design attempted to respond to the feedback that the previous version was too clean.A further iteration was required.
Design Phase:The winning homepage design.This iteration satisfied the user requirement for an edgy look and feel while remaining aesthetically pleasing.
The profile page was the next key area to get right as it was to be one of the most viewed pages on the platform.
The winning design was built with flexibility in mind as we wanted to allow users to customise their experience via user skins which users could design for themselves and for friends in bands (skin marketplace).
The Final profile page (logged in view)
We addressed a key user concern by allowing members to update their profile content 'on the fly'. Our feedback sessions had shown that users were often frustrated at having to go to a completely different page to edit their profile details. This unique approach (at the time) enabled to make all edits and changes almost instantaneously.
Prior to deployment of the 'Skin marketplace' a number of initial skins were included which were based on our feedback sessions in the design phase. Skins included a 'girly skin' a 'punk rocker' skin and a number of popular bands from our offline events.
Above we can see the same profile with the 'girly skin' applied.
Another key piece of feedback was that our users found most video editing software difficult to use and hard to publish video online (at the time).
I found a company called Kaltura and negotiated a deal to develop a unique video editor / remixer which allowed our members to remix video and mash up content they had created themselves along with existing libraries of content from our live events and content available online.
The video editor was designed to be incredibly easy to use with drag and drop functionality and an intuitive user interface.
This allowed our members to produce great content without leaving the Blastbeat website - a superb user experience.
