Wave
A profile made of music.
Wave started with an app called Equals.
It is a social app built around music, it has more than a million people on it, and using it for free does not feel good. That gap is the whole opportunity. I wanted to build the version that feels considered from the first screen and stays free for the people using it.
But the bigger problem was never the price.
Every music app shows you what someone played. Equals does it. Spotify does it. It is easy to build, because the data is already sitting there.
We are not our listening history.
You are not the song you left on while you did the dishes. You are the handful of records you would give someone to explain yourself.
So Wave asks you to choose, and then to arrange what you chose. Your board is a made thing, not a log. It is closer to art than to data.
The build
The idea landed a month ago. Here is every decision since, including the ones I threw away.
Day 1
Ideas, not screens.
No layouts yet. Just a long list of what a music profile could be, most of it bad.
Day 2
The question that decided everything.
History or favourites. I picked favourites, and the app stopped being a tracker.
Day 3
The board.
Nine covers in a grid, and the order is yours. The arranging is what makes it a self portrait instead of a list.
The first wireframes: the board, and every screen that had to hold it. Day 4
Dark, and one colour.
Tried yellow green. Tried teal. Both were hard on the eye. Landed on wine.
The accent that won, and the two colours that have to work on top of it.