Building SoundCloud Reflection

I am currently working on a startup company creating a platform that will hopefully one day work alongside SoundCloud. Reading about their design process was really fascinating as certain elements of the platform I am working on will be similar. I love how much their app evolved through the design process and as they gained more and more users. As their user base and use cases evolved, they recognized what they needed to change and evolved accordingly.

For my platform, I strive to do the exact same. When it comes to designing a mobile platform, they all should work this way. Often times a platform’s initial purpose shifts and good designers must recognize the shift in use cases and work with it. Good design recognizes what the user needs and capitalizes on it. SoundCloud did just that. They spent a lot of time designing the feed and interactions between profiles which was great, but they eventually shifted the core of their app to the player.

Keeping the interactions with the activity feed and the features they worked hard on while simply shifting the core aspect of their mobile platform to the player was perfect. They made the player be the focus when a user used their application, but kept the simplicity and overall feel of the rest of the platform as a whole. I love how they focused on simplicity and as the app evolved it became more and more simple and intuitive.

I love how Michael Evensen writes that “the more we informed, the more we confused people.” In today’s age of design, the more a platform conveys without information the better. The more intuitive the UI is the more users will stick around the app. No one likes to read and have to ‘learn’ how to do something on an app. People just want to pick up their phone and use the app.

SoundCloud did a great job at making this possible. As they made the player the core focus of the platform, they made each gesture and interaction as intuitive as possible. They looked at the what buttons and interactions were most important, and made those the easiest to perform. For example, they recognized that the pause and play interactions would be the most used and important to the player, so when clicking basically anywhere on the screen the song will do just that — pause and play. Intuitive interactions like this are what make using SoundCloud a truly seamless experience.

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