Spiral was a social media and music streaming service which was designed for a assesment.The concept was to create a music streaming service which could be used to search through similar band as well as bands which inspired your favourite artists and check out bands who were inspired by them at the same time also keeping tabs on the music your friends are enjoying and being able to recomend music to them and share it through other social media forms. The aesthetic of the concept was to be make like a galaxy with randomly generated 3d star paterns and planets. The app would be designed to run on most tablet devices and would take advantage of the touch screen capabilities to create a sci-fi feel for the application. In these concepts stars are represented by white dots and planets are grey circles.
The Triangular touch menu displayed here would rotate when another option is tapped on. The search option in the center would turn temporaril invisable and would reappear when the rotation is complete. In the top right corner their is a clock just for a quick easy reference without leaving the app. A back option is also available if the user pressed home from another part of the appwhen available it is possitioned in the top left underneath the clock. Next to it when applicable a option to go strait to the audio player is available if a song is paused or currently playing. lastly in the top right their is a symbol with a number this is a notification for if and how many songs have been recomended since last checked.
As seen here the home option is positioned in between the home and back option their is also a slide out option to quickly get to other parts of the application.
In the settings of the app the user may turn on his conection to social media so that other firnds who use the app will automatically be added to the friends. in the settings you are also able to change the colouration of the hud and the brightness and gamma settings as well.
The explore section is where users will look for new bands searching through similar artists or randomly through genre or check out their favourite music.
When searching through the band/genre list you can shortlist by typing in a genre/band name in the search bar below it will automatically shortlist the bands as you type but it would be able to be double tapped in order to re-order the list by closest match rather then alphabet. Alternativley the user could search through genre/bands manualy witth a slider and a alphabetical restriction options. This list items are currently represented with placeholders.
This is the audio universe it shows multiple band galaxies. it connects the bands with zoomed out versions of the bands galaxies. with a ring around the band in the center which you chose to view and lines connecting to the most highly recomended bands. tapping on another band will zoom in on their galaxy and will display the new focuses recomended bands and connect them with lines. the lines connecting through the different bands is to show when a band is recomended by the recomendations if that makes sense. As the final version would be 3D their is a small icon in the botton left corner the idea is that if you tap it it will glow brighter and it will activate the view option where the user may use their fingers to more aroung to gain a different view.
This is a bands galaxy zoomed in here by clicking on planets you are able to view different things relating to the band. at this point users are able to favourite the band onto their list fron the slideout menu and also share it to their friends if they believe they have friends who would enjoy it.
THis is a quick band search option the example used is the discography option. htrough it the user may select albums and songs they are also able to press random to create a shuffled list of all the tracks aswell as double tap the bamds name to play all the songs in order. With the list the songs will change as the albums are moved as well as the album artwork which is hovering over the randomly generated planet
THe social section of the app is quite similar to the explore section except this is more focused on your friends and social features of the application.
The social feed displays the current activity of bands you have favourited and your friends on spiral so you can easily view what they have been recently interested in or what new music a favourited band has released.
The recomendation system leaves tthe recomended song and artists in a list allowing you to check through them at your leisure the list. A song will be removed after viewing it and the whole list will be removed if the erase button is pressed.
The system for the social settings works exactly like the explore universe except its contacts on your friends list rather then bands.
The user universe works exactly like the band one however the planets options are different. When on a friends universe it will place their first name infront of the text on the planet. For example In Jesse's universe it's Jesse's Favourite Albums..
This is a example of the friends list it works exactly like the band discography however it has bands in the options placed above the albums on the mid left. Their are many other pages such as Commented on, Inspiration among others which would be displayed just like this so this page was done to display all of them.
This page was done to display the difference of playlist as the bands and albums wouldn't seperate the songs so the options would be displayed slightly differently. Users are also given a remove option on their playlist planet in the form of a minus positioned with a decent distance from the name of the play list.
This is the acuta audio playing part of the app. It was seperated into three sections to display what each part does and what items are changable. is also displays what the dropout menu appears like minamised. it gives you the option to coment on the track aswell as skip and change the volume on the app. The other feature of this is when the album artwork is double tapped the song will pause and the lighting will dim and flash slowly. Another feature is the stars in the background would work as a equaliser for display purposes.
The favourite options allow users to add things to their favourite lists the favourite options will only show down to the current section you are on for examply you can't favourite a song in the band galaxy but you can favourite a band while listning to a specific song. The play list option doesn't include a selection box as it takes you to a seperate menu altogether. to remove a song, album or band simply click on the song go into favourites and untap the box.
The share settings allow you to chose how to share the item weather it posts on your social media feeds or shares only through spiral. the other option is to recomend which will bring up a galaxy view where you tap all the friends you with to reccomend it to and press ok which is positioned in the same spot.
To add a song to a playlist you can simply douple tap the + next to the playlist name of choice or type a new playlists name in. Users can add it to multiple playlists at once as the only way out is to click back or another option.
This is a list of all the symbols used and their meanings for the application.
Below is the the navigation map of the application.
