Muzi
An app designed to spark creativity
We designed an app to deliver personalized guidance to artists seeking growth and inspiration
BEFORE
Artist and coach seeking to expand the impact of her creativity development program through a mobile app
Needed a UX to support assessment, program personalization, and progress tracking while keeping users inspired and motivated
Big, broad goals for product’s functionality, reach, and impact that needed prioritizing for MVP
AFTER
Unique aesthetic that feels uninhibited, yet functional
Fully designed MVP primed for development and initial release to Apple’s App Store
Business and product strategy evolution timeline to support client’s broader goals for the app’s future
Challenge
Scaling artistic mentorship through a digital medium
Across genres and experience levels, creatives need fresh approaches and inspiration to learn, evolve, and stay motivated. Musician and educator Rachel Efron had channeled her own experiences overcoming artistic challenges into a program for helping others manifest their creative potential. Energized by the results she saw in her one-on-one coaching work, she resolved to expand access to her strategies by translating her program into a self-paced, self-led digital version for mobile.
The mission was clear, but the path forward was not. How do you design an app that can understand an artist’s unique needs, recommend meaningful advice and activities based on those needs, and create an experience that feels supportive, authentic, and human-centered – without the tech getting in the way? These are the questions the client brought us in to answer.
Process
Sketching out the landscape
Creating the proposed app, Muzi, required both product strategy and intentional design. We started with an in-depth Exploration and Discovery phase, researching the competitive landscape and total addressable market. We identified many adjacent offerings aimed at helping creatives share inspiration with one another, but none providing ongoing, structured support for their personal artistic growth – confirming Muzi’s potential to fill an unmet need.
Process
Portraits of the artists
We conducted interviews with target users to explore their problems, goals, and concerns. Creatives expressed interest in a personalized, self-paced program to help them stay focused on their goals, where and whenever they could find time in their day to develop their craft. We distilled the insights from these conversations, providing a solid foundation for feature prioritization, branding, and more.
Process
Lifecycle & feature prioritization
Equipped with an understanding of our market and users, we collaborated with the client to break down and organize its long-term vision for the Muzi app. Together, we created a plan for the product’s release and evolution, including MVP scope, feature and functionality expansion over time, and monetization strategy.
Solution
Visualizing goals & growth
The program that inspired Muzi was designed to help creatives identify personal areas for development across five dimensions of the creative process. In her in-person sessions, the client had delivered feedback and encouragement to participants throughout the coaching process, but now we needed a way to track and communicate a user’s progress in the app format. Playing on the concept of sparking creativity, we devised a responsive “spark” chart to convey the user’s growth over time, helping them stay motivated and on-track.
Solution
Setting the tone
Muzi needed to put users into an open and creative state of mind, while also keeping them motivated and focused. That meant evoking the freedom and messiness of hands-on creation, without compromising usability and accessibility. Through ongoing experimentation and client feedback, we successfully balanced these goals by combining a foundation of organic textures, vibrant colors, and custom illustrations with a clean, high-contrast UI (fonts, design elements, and navigation structure), for an overall effect that is inspiring and goal-oriented.
Solution
A framework for the future
The clients came to us imagining Muzi as a galvanizing force for inspiring, connecting, and promoting artists and their work, and we designed the MVP with this future scope in mind. We created an onboarding flow and membership tier structure designed to increase user commitment to the Muzi program over time. And we laid the groundwork for the future evolution of a network of Muzi artists that could share, collaborate, and champion each other’s creations, increasing the brand’s reach, impact, and long-term viability.
Prototype
Artistry in action
We delivered a full-fidelity interactive prototype, along with a defined design system and suite of custom assets ready for implementation.
Praise from our clients
Their guidance was so valuable throughout the whole process. I appreciated how their product and design team stepped in at key moments to keep us heading in a good direction. It was a journey to find the Muzi aesthetic, and we could never have gotten there without their help and leadership.
Rachel Efron
Creativity Development Coach & Co-Founder, Muzi
They were extremely collaborative. They listened intently to all of our feedback and worked closely with us to achieve our goals. All their communications were positive, clear, and timely, and they were consistently on top of things throughout the entire project. We couldn’t have asked for a better partnership.
Jay Clemens
Co-founder, Muzi
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