Smule

I fell in love with Smule’s mission of “bringing everyone together through music” and making music accessible for everyone in the world. Smule was an amazing playground for me as a product designer to launch MVPs and see them grow into their own products and communities.

While I was there, I worked with the CEO, VP of Product, a front end engineer/prototyper to create 4 new apps, 3 of which gained sufficient traction and scale enabling us to hire individual teams to support the product under my design department leadership.

I created 4 new apps while I was at Smule, however to this day, I am most proud of the launch of Sing! Karaoke, which started out as an inspiration and grew to be 50 million monthly active users singing their hearts out together. It was so successful, it became synonymous and representative of the company itself and the app was renamed “Smule”.

Sing! Karaoke started out because users were already hacking apps to sing together. The biggest group that sang together was about 287 people dedicating “Imagine” by John Lennon to Japan in 2011 for Earthquake and Tsunami Relief. Given our company’s vision of unity through music and access for all, we wanted to make singing together easier for users to do.

Here’s a sketch of the very first UX flow we discussed. We always wanted a flow that had “join” (for a group song) and “sing” (for a solo song).

Here’s the first iteration of what was launched. Keep in mind, this was back in 2012, and everything was 3D and fueled via gamification.

We realized it might not be the best choice for us to design the experience led by the gaming trend. As we iterated the design further and talked to more users, we ended up with an experience that mimicked more of the real life karaoke experience. 

Another very important part of the app that we constantly improved was the “songbook” section. We wanted the experience of seeing a song that they liked to completing the purchasing flow and get singing to be as quick and easy as possible.

After many iterations we learned that users preferred things to be obvious. The users liked when their next steps were clearly spelled out for them. Just by adding the “Sing” CTA, we were able to bump up the start of a song by 200%.

Smule was the first place where I established myself as a Design Leader:

• Led and managed 3 UI/visual designers, 3 UX designers, 2 marketing designers; conducted 1:1s, design critiques, brainstorms, updates and strategic planning.

• Worked directly with the SVP of Product and led cross functional strategy meetings.

• Established global integration and design system for Smule brand registration across all new and existing apps, as well as, new feature developments for existing apps;

• Responsible for community creation and development inclusive of: design development of Smule specific social network and related web integration and interaction.

• Added User Research as an integral part of the Design process; introduced, managed, conducted, presented and connected learnings to the appropriate next move; trained the entire design team to utilize User Research within our design tool set.

• Launched the web app for creators to upload their own music, so users can sing on top of their track; Sing! Karaoke initially launched as an app, but after 3 years became a full music platform where any singer or composer could upload, socialize and sing together on the website.

• Re-established the company brand through: Logo Mark and Implementation Development, Brand Guidelines, Corporate and Consumer Communications, including, but not limited to: brand and product websites, e-mail, e-commerce promotions, etc.

• Worked closely with the Marketing team to bridge the gap between product and marketing; was creative director on marketing materials across various product ads (social media and TV), Product Launch (iTunes, Cross-Product, Websites), Application Interstitials and Seasonal Promotions.