The Star beer brand has always been heavily associated with music. I was tasked with designing an Android app and mobile website that would allow users to preview and download the latest African music (mostly not available on music streaming services like of Spotify and Deezer). As well as music tracks, there needed to be videos, charts, playlists, articles, news and gossip. Each content piece had to be tagged and interconnected so that related content could be suggested. There needed to be functionality to comment on every content type.
There was already an existing Star Music App for both iPhone and Android platforms. Both existing apps had run into technical difficulties and Heineken wanted to start anew. With the demographic being Sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of users were Android smartphone users or feature phone users. With this in mind and because of the available budget, we decided that the best solution was to design and build a new Android app and mobile website from the ground up. After a number of lengthy internal discussions and calls with the client, we focussed in on how the app and website should position itself. There wasn’t time or budget to create an extensive music app like Spotify, so it was decided that we would create an experience that allowed users to simply preview and download tracks on a daily basis.
After creating a site map I then went on to create pencil sketched wireframes of the main screens. I pinned the wireframes to the wall and they were reviewed internally by myself, the lead developer and the account handler. With the wireframes displayed we were able to make improvements during the meeting. I then translated these into digital wireframes using Axure. This was them printed out and reviewed again internally and more improvements were made. I then created a PDF with comments to explain functionality and animation. I also made an interactive version of the wireframes in Axure. This was presented to the client and subsequently signed off.
I then used Photoshop to lay out every individual screen. This was presented to the client in the form of a PDF and was signed off after a couple of iterations. The app was available on the Google Play Store and got a rating of 4.1 out of 5. The website is available for anyone with a feature or smart phone.
