About

50% of households in the US - more than 60 million- are fans of Podcasts, and 69% of all podcast consumption is done via smartphone, according to nielsen (source). Awe is a subscription service that gives users access to a library of nature and science related content for a monthly fee, and this project was building a mobile app and brand identity for the service.

Scope

This project covers the end to end design process from research and testing to illustration and logo creation (concisely!). If you only have time to look at one case study, this is the one to see.

Ideation

At this stage after some brief market research, user surveys and creating some user personas, I had a clearer idea of what a successful user flow would look like. Insights from this research concluded that users wanted a robust search and discover feature, as well as a way to bookmark podcasts at the focal point of the app.

Identity

For this project I chose not to focus on creating low fidelity wireframes. With a limited number of required pages and a heavy emphasis on the visual design, it made more sense to develop the ui and brand identity, and use high fidelity mockups for further testing/ux work instead.

To keep the logo cohesive with the name and idenity, following along the vein of gently awe inspiring content, I combined a human eye with an eclipse to create the awe crescent.

To build a coherant identity, I leaned further into the outer space theme and chose a deep purple as the signature colour. I then built a colour scheme around this, with accessability constraints in mind, building text/background combinations that are all WCAG AAA contrast rated, with contrast ratios at a minimum of 10.36:1, and at 15.13:1 for all body and information text.

Note the lack of pure white or black anywhere in the app, this was an intentional choice to soften appearance.

I created custom icons for podcast tags and app navigation, and built brand guidelines for future work. I also created all the illustrations which, in my opinion, were the missing piece to completing the visual interface.

Interaction Design

I also designed some microinteractions to flesh out the app, as well as the welcome screens below.

Final Screens