The 5 Minute Pitch
Because we had the Pandora media business, we decided to approach the client with a creative, industry-leading opportunity that could set Pandora apart from the competition: Hear Here
The idea started as a musically-driven walking tour, optimized to personal taste. It would function as a playlist that changes as the user makes their way through a city, giving commentary, songs, and interesting facts about the music heritage of the current location.
Challenge
Sometimes getting the client to love the idea is not enough. Pandora's engineers were too busy building the new Pandora app and giving them more work to create special algorithms or build a new features was not feasible. We had to take a different approach.
Content Units
After exploring our options, we realized that Pandora's dynamic ad units were perfect for content delivery. We could still personalize the experience without compromising the core idea. The ad units were renamed "content units" because these would be paired with their ads. We would differentiate the Hear Here content from the ads by creating a consistent campaign look and feel.
User Journey
The idea is to provide unique content by utilizing Pandora's user data such as customer music taste and user location. In the user journey map below, you can see three users that walk the exact same path but have different music taste. Each gets a unique experience. To the left, we see that our rock aficionado is also a first-time user of the Pandora Hear Here experience. A fullscreen ad acts as a brief onboarding to introduce the general concept.
Each color represents the different music genres.
Content Flow
This shows how we envisioned the content flow; From curating and generating content in different formats, to choosing how that content would be delivered. Being mindful of who would be in that position was important, as Pandora needed to be perceived as a respected and knowledgeable voice. Prominent voices in the music industry like Joe Selvin, Michael Azerrad, and Patti Smith would make great candidates to represent Pandora in the Hear Here experience.
Executions
Our rock aficionado is listening to the Velvet Underground on a journey through the city. He feels a vibration on his phone and removes it from his pocket to reveal a content unit on his home screen about the movie "Apocalypse Now" being mixed at the building right in front of him. After clicking "Read On" he gets to see additional media and insights.
The main pieces of information in a screen are an image, a fact and a location they could refer to when walking.
Our Punk Rock fan walks by Mabuhay Gardens to find out some fun facts about the venue with a historical video recording. Later he gets to learn more about a legendary night at Bimbo's 365 by reading while listening to "The Velvet Underground".
On the left: Video format. The red ruler between the visual and the details acts as the progress bar for the video.
On the right: Text and image only format. A song plays while this content unit is displayed.
Sound and image format: a clip related to the visual plays while the content unit is in display.
Onboarding
What you see below is a storyboard of what would be a brief on-boarding video. By summarizing the experience in three main steps, this intro tells you how to make the most out of your Hear Here journey.
Pandora knows you
Unique launch screens I designed thinking of different tastes in music and to provide a personalized experience.
Look & Feel
I wanted Hear Here to fit in within the "Sounds like you" campaign that was about to release with the new app. Using patterns and bright colors, I created a unique vibe for each genre we would be supporting. Like in the launch screens above, I identified the blue pattern as rock, the pink with red patches as Americana and the blood-like red as punk rock.
