Scarlett 4th Gen

My Role

Praise for Scarlett 4th Gen

“It’s hard to think of an interface better-suited to a small studio or portable setup.” – Music Tech – 9/10

“Although they look similar, the new Scarletts are slicker audio interfaces with better specs and more options. ” – MusicRadar – 4.5/5

Project Background

Focusrite’s Scarlett range is the world’s best-selling audio interface for musicians, producers, content creators, and streamers under $500. Already three generations in, I took a leading role as Senior Product Designer in defining the next generation.

(But I didn’t do it alone, and huge credit goes to the wonderful Mino Kodama for her contribution to the project during her time at Focusrite.)

Doing The Research

The project began with fifteen user interviews of many different types of musicians. But that wasn’t all. A survey with 15,000 respondents was crucial in understanding pain points and needs on a large scale!

We learned that for many, a $100-$300 investment in an audio interface was a big step in their music making process and as such how well they could use it had a big impact on their self esteem and output.

The Hardware Design

Despite the huge successes of the Scarlett 3rd generation. I had issues with some of the design decisions. A desire for a cleaner look, while attractive, meant that many controls were taken off the control surface. This meant that some features were undiscoverable on the hardware. This had to change.

Through our research we identified that accurately setting gain (the volume of a recording) and avoiding clips (when things get too loud) was a key pain points. We decided to bring in Auto Gain from Vocaster and add the new Clip Safe function to protect against volume peaks.

Most importantly all of these controls were accessible from buttons on the physical hardware (although they can also be controlled from software!).

Halo 2.0

Scarlett is also known for its gain halos, which show green for good signals and red when it’s too loud. This is pretty useful, but the low resolution means that users don’t know something has gone wrong until it has happened.

With Halo 2.0 I led the design decisions around how many LEDs we’d need. The behavior and the color tuning of the LEDs.

As the preamps were digital (and controllable via Auto Gain and Software) this meant that we could also use the new Halos to add even more feedback.

The halos would count down during the Auto Gain process (shown above). Additionally, as the dials did not have end stops (they are endless encoders) I defined a method for showing the gain position using a white LED color, that could also use the standard metering colors to convey even more useful information.

Prototyping it

Of course, this didn’t happen over night and there were many, many iterations and reviews! Throughout this I was a stalwart for the end user and ensuring we were making the right decisions for the right reasons, even if some of those decisions were tough.

Below is an image of one of my fully interactable digital prototypes. Although it is a software prototype of a hardware product, the LEDs and meters worked, and every element of the device was fully interactive.

Accessibility

As always, I was adamant that we would make our new interface the most accessible it has ever been. From the outset I defined in the requirements that as much as possible of the hardware could be controlled from software and vice versa. This decision led to the creation of Focusrite Control 2 control software that allows full remote control of the interface with screen reader support.

Beyond Hardware

I wasn’t stopped at the Scarlett hardware though. I was also busy designing the Easy Start onboarding process.

But not only that, I was working on the range and product web pages for the new products. I didn’t do it alone, but it was with my input that som key design elements, such as the software carousel, were used. I also worked directly with copywriters in the marketing teams to ensure we hit the best, most engaging copy, that support SEO but also got to the unique value to content creators succinctly.

You can see the Scarlett range page here and the an example of the 2i2 product page here.