Nov 2017 - Feb 2018
One of the social platforms I had the pleasure of working with is of Stage1818, an early stage startup focused on bringing together talented singers, songwriters, musicians, and actors in India. The aim of the platform was to create a social hub for gathering talent, and also to provide networking opportunities not only between young artists but also between artists and professionals in the industry. Therefore, the platform served two purposes - as a social media hub for sharing created music and for talent recruiting/networking.
During my time with the Stage1818 team, our primary goals were to provide a more lively platform that motivated user activity, as well as attract new users. This included, but was not limited to, posting content, sharing, liking, commenting, and signing up for live auditions with entertainment industry professionals.
Due to the small scale and early growth nature of the platform, we had nearly limitless creative freedom to achieve the goal of increasing users and user activity.
This is one of the appearance changes I have suggested to the landing page. The addition of a high definition image or video in the background would act to bring a feel of vibrancy to the landing page, inciting new users to join the platform. The imagery relates to the overall theme of our platform, to provide a social network for upcoming artists to collaborate and meet with established professionals in the entertainment industry.
One of the most important aspects for a social platform is the way in which user uploaded photos are displayed. Whereas originally photo uploads were displayed inside bordered views with comments showing, I designed to have the images themselves be the views, with the options to comment and like simply presented as overlays. This presents a much cleaner appearance that gives more focus to the photos themselves, rather than the like or comments.
That isn't to say that comments and likes aren't important. The positive feedback that an individual receives from their peers is one of the things that makes social media so fun to use. However, nobody enjoys seeing the value 0 attached to their like or comment count. Therefore, I opted to hide the number value of likes or comments on new uploads and then show the count only after likes or comments have been made; this ensures that every new upload has the opportunity to make an unbiased impression on viewers, without the value 0 attached.