Creating ‘shades’ re-sparked my love for design.
Accessibility isn’t an afterthought.
The app’s visual design was driven by uncovering user pain points and conducting user research to cater to both typical users and those with sound sensitivities. Shades pushed me to think beyond the obvious and rethink how music can be experienced. Design at its core is empathy.
Design is triply better when done together.
Working with my team was a great experience; we quickly found a system to fill in each other’s gaps and stay resilient as we fully built out the app design despite the quick turnaround. Also, coming from different backgrounds and majors made our discussions and ideation process more engaging and interactive. Communication played a crucial role in pulling our ideas together successfully.
BIG SHOUTOUT TO BEN AND CHARLES FOR MAKING SHADES COME TO LIFE! Couldn’t have asked for a better team to stick it out with me through this incredible (and sleep-deprived) experience :’)
On the Horizon
Bringing Shades to life in 24 hours meant making intentional trade-offs to build fast and focus on delivering a meaningful core experience. With positive validation from early users and judges, we hope to map out new features guided by real feedback and unmet sensory needs.
Conduct targeted testing to refine our visuals, haptics, and interaction flows.
Potential partnerships with accessibility organizations to explore haptic integration.
AI-driven emotional and mood recognition to expand visual and haptic output.
So, how might we create a product that can enhance the overall music experience, even to those who encounter hearing impairments?
Feature Ideation
DESIGN SYSTEM
We created a design system to ensure visual consistency and streamline collaboration to speed up interface development within a limited time frame.
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Ceilings
Lizzy McAlpine
Liked Songs
EDM
04:00
SYNESTHESIA-INSPIRED VISUALS
To help users experience music beyond sound, we designed an immersive “aura” system—a dynamic color blob that visualizes the song’s emotion, tempo, and instrumentation. Supporting elements like rhythm-reactive bars and expressive lyrics create a multi-sensory song card that reflects how music feels, not just how it sounds.
Color as Emotion: Aura color shifts reflect mood and intensity of the song in real time
Visual Rhythm: Pulses and animations sync with tempo and dynamics to follow its musical flow
Expressive Typography: Lyrics are styled in fonts that reflect the tone of the song
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
We created this information architecture to visualize and prioritize the flow of features, which helped guide our design decisions around user control, personalization, and inclusive interaction pathways.
Home
Explore
Music
Search field
User Profile
Artists
Albums
Auras/Moods
Customizations
Notifications
Your Library
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Settings
Mixed for You
Playlist block
Recommended for You
Trending
Your top genres
Explore Your Auras
Now Playing
Guiding Lights
From a focus on users with hearing sensitivities to those seeking a more immersive music experience, we wanted to target a diverse range of users. We identified three goals to direct the development of our app’s features:
01 Enable rich customization for multi-sensory accessibility and control
02 Create visual immersion through real-time, responsive design elements
03 Foster emotional connection and mood-based interaction, beyond just listening
Reality Check
Users with hearing differences consistently reported feeling disconnected from music's emotional impact.
“Sometimes when I’m listening to a song, [it] gets a little difficult because I just hear bits and pieces of it. It’s making me work harder to enjoy music... I need my music app to understand me.”
Maya, 24 - Partial Hearing Loss
Users emphasized that hearing experiences are highly individual. What works for one person doesn't work for another, highlighting the need for customizable accessibility features.
EXPLORE + CURATED FEED
Open to a personalized feed and filter by trending auras that match your mood.
SONG CARD
Each song card reveals the full sensory profile of a track. The aura reflects how the song feels, while genre tags and mood descriptors offer context to guide discovery.
MOOD FILTERS
Explore songs based on their aura with mood filters to match music to how you’re feeling.
SONG SEARCH
Quickly find songs by name, mood, or genre and see results with Aura previews to sense the vibe before pressing play.
USER PROFILE
See a snapshot of the energy you give off through your music, reflecting your listening style, mood, and personality.
Introducing shades.
OUR 24-HOUR ENCORE.
A space where music is seen, felt, and personalized to bring music to life.
Entertainment for All?
Today’s entertainment often rushes to capture our attention with flashy visuals and quick-access media. The industry celebrates digitization and caters to the most obvious audiences, overlooking the diverse ways people experience content.
We identified a notable gap in experiences for hard-of-hearing individuals as many existing platforms fail to provide accessible resources, highlighting a key opportunity for impact.
More than 1.5 billion people globally experience hearing loss, including 430 million who have disabling hearing loss. Yet music streaming apps in particular prioritize auditory experiences, leaving those who are hard of hearing without equal access to the cultural and emotional benefits of music.
ROLE
Product Designer
TIMELINE
Apr 2024 (24 Hours)
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Procreate, After Effects
TEAM
3 Designers
Music is often described as a universal language, but what if that language isn't accessible to everyone?
Shades is a multi-sensory music streaming app designed to make musical experiences more inclusive for individuals with hearing loss, auditory sensitivity, or sensory processing differences. Conceptualized and built in the USC’s CreatSC Designathon, our team created a prototype that translated auditory experiences into customizable visual and tactile feedback so that users can enjoy music on their own terms.
We placed second for our app design!
Final Pitch Deck
shades
Redefining the music experience for all.