DFS - First Ideas/Mockups

Having developed the wireframes subject to feedback from the silent critique, these initial designs are built upon the amended wireframes. With layout having already been considered when creating the wireframes, the most important thing in this process was applying suitable image, typography and colour. It was important to try and retain some of Spotifys visual identity, but at the same time, build upon it and make it a bit more exciting and visual. This is the reason the typeface ‘Alexander Quill’ was used - it’s quite contemporary and has a bit of character. Upon reviewing its use within these designs and gaining peer feedback, it might be an idea to try using something simpler for a body text, Helvetica for example, and then reserving Alexander Quill for the headings, because in some cases, it just makes the UX look less professional and refined. Some of the type for the headers has been applied slightly more experimentally then Spotify would, e.g. on the timeline page, and the genius lyrics page where the headers have an outlined drop shadow and the artist name and song name align with the cover image perpendicularly. Little design decisions like this will make the app look more visual and contemporary, however once the designs are in a more complete stage, it will be a case of reviewing what works and what doesn’t. 

Another design decision in this stage of development was to use a black/grey gradient for the background; this is something which Spotify does and while it looks quite resolved for a few of the designs such as the genius lyrics page, for instances such as the drop down info on the home page, it drops down to the point where the gradient goes a lot brighter which doesn’t look as good. It would be worth experimenting with no gradients, or possibly applying them to a select few pages.

A purple gradient has been used as a sort of highlight colour for the general visual identity of the app’s design. The rationale behind this was to replace the green used in the normal Spotify app, solidifying the idea of it being a separate app. It works well in some instances better then others and the best approach with this moving forward would be to maybe apply it at the end to certain key visual components.

The live video function’s design currently seems to be falling a bit short and doesn’t look as professional as it should be. looking at Youtube’s mobile site, there are a few things which could be applied; firstly in landscape mode, the buttons could appear on panels which would mean when clicking on or of screen, they would just appear or disappear, instead of disturbing the aspect ratio of the video, also its could have a return button in the top left corner for a better UI. In the portrait mode, the title and info of the performance needs to be there.