Slow cooking design
When listening to music sometimes a song is really appealing. I want to express my current love for a track. A common pattern for this is “favoriting” a song. However this dichitomy really does not work for me. I only just met this track , I don’t want to marry it yet.
In music room I am exploring other ways of expressing my current love for a track. But since I don’t really know what I am looking for I am slow cooking this process. I made an option for a “boosting” a track. The user can boost a track as much as he/she likes. Each boost has a timestamp. To play boosts, I have made an experimental user interface: for now you can shuffle all boosts, or shuffle a monthly list. Additionally you can make playlists of the boosts. Slow cooking this design also means that I only partially implemented the concept, just to see what I am doing with the feature on a daily basis. Is it useful? What do I use it for? Right now I have multiple dishes on the stew: like boosting in the MusicRoom, and also a feature to time appointments in Hamaki. They might make the product, or they might be disposed of. It is pretty useful to slow cook your design. Live it for a while, don’t expose it to your users yet. But find out how the idea works in daily life, and what it needs to succeed.