Making a Song in Two Minutes

Creating a revolutionary groovebox, allowing fast and tactile idea generation that got musicians away from presets browsing purgatory.

My Role

Introduction

At the end of 2013, Novation wanted to leverage its current IP and history by delivering a product that built on its successful synthesiser and launchpad range.

The launchpad is a grid-based system for launching music loops and samples. The Novation synthesiser range is well known for delivering great-sounding, deep synth engines.

Through our experiences with a variety of users, we found that many got stuck in their music software, scrolling through presets and different options and getting stuck on making any kind of decisions about their song. This meant they spent more time in menus than they did actually creating music, resulting in frustration and many unfinished pieces of music.

We felt there had to be a way to help musicians to step away from this computer-based environment and focus on the music, rather than preset browsing or parameter tweaking. So we defined a goal, to create a solution that would allow a user to “Make a song in 2 minutes.”

Research

Our first step was to take a look at the marketplace and understand what products were currently available that offered the kind of inspiration we were looking for. At that time we were at the very front of the hardware revolution in music technology, a movement that has seen many users migrate back to using hardware instead of software.

We interviewed a variety of users about their music-making process, what frustrated them, and what they desired to achieve. We spoke to users who were starting their journey but also those who had been making music for a long time but sought solutions that offered them a way to think differently and gain new inspiration.

Iterate, Iterate

We began our design by holding workshops with team members to draw lots of different designs in an “anything goes” mindset. By doing this we were able to come up with a variety of creative ideas and take the best bits from each and also learn what we did not want to do.

We coupled this work with what we had learned from our users and through writing out a series of user stories and scenarios, converged on some potential solutions.

I developed features and UI in many forms, from basic hand-drawn images, drawings in Illustrator, and interactive prototypes in Axure. I then reviewed in UX sessions either remotely or in person with users representing the target persona.

During the project, I continued to collaborate with the software teams delivering the front-end UI of the product. First designing it as a basic iPad app which allowed further UX testing and tweaking of the experience.

Reception

It is without a doubt about the most musical fun you can have with one box and no computer, and I haven’t made music so quickly in 20-odd years of reviewing gear.” Later, Music Tech Mag awarded the Circuit the “Best Innovation” award in their “Gear of the Year 2015 awards ceremony

Music Tech Magazine

Novation have made a lifestyle synth!” And that “The most notable thing about my time with the Circuit is how much I used it. It’s so easy to noodle on the Circuit around the house in those slivers of time between work, kids and passing out.

SoundOnSound

I was honored to be interviewed about Circuit by Kim Bjorn for the book “Push, Turn, Move.”

The book covers the visual and UX design of digital musical instruments, both hardware and software. In the interview, I spoke about the design process used to create the first Novation Circuit.

You can find out more about the book here.