88RISING
Lead Visual Designer
UI/UX Prototyping
UX Researcher
Interaction Designer
Copywriter
Decision Maker
Figma
After Effects
Premiere Pro
Claret Egwim-
Nwagbara
Alex Luowan
Luke Do
Terence Xu
Justin Yu
Elevating artists like Joji, Rich Brian and NIKI into modern pop culture, 88rising is a multi-media record label that aims to create a platform for Asian and Asian-American talents, bridging the gap between the East and the West.
A seven-week experience design project within a group of five, I was mainly responsible for the project’s strategy, experimental visual direction, interactions, and prototyping as the lead visual designer.
Our team aimed to create a centralized platform for 88rising’s casual fans to easily discover and support artists from their large roster, boosting discovery of both large and lesser-known artists while enhancing fan retention.
In order to understand the nuances of experience design, our team spent our first week using a Starbucks pop-up shop as a case study, learning how important experience design was in shaping a brand’s perception through well-thought-out customer experiences. By intentionally crafting meaningful and memorable experiences within every customer touchpoint, designers can provide customers with an experience that improves satisfaction and loyalty while differentiating a brand from its competitors.
The next step of the project was to find a client that had gaps in their customer journey that we could design a meaningful experience for. Our team spent most of our time stuck in this stage, conducting deep research into over 60 clients of various industries within four weeks, constantly trying to frame the perfect business problem that would lead to an interesting design project. However, we would eventually land on the record label: 88rising.
“For Asians, Asian Americans and just Asian youth globally, there’s no real home on the Internet or a company consistently putting out things that either include Asian talent or Asian viewpoints in stories.”
— Sean Miyashiro, Founder of 88rising
2016-2019
2020-2023
88rising redefined how Asians fit in mainstream media, challenging existing stereotypes by showcasing that Asians can have an equal voice in the music industry. Having fostered many breakout artists like Joji, Rich Brian, and Niki, 88rising quickly became a cultural phenomenon, gaining over 3 billion views within 3 years on YouTube.
However, 88rising has since faced issues with discoverability. Within the past 4 years, they’ve only accumulated 0.43 billion views on YouTube and have struggled with providing their new artists with the same reach that they formerly had.
to an online survey asking casual And die-hard fans about their music-sharing habits, perception of 88rising’s brand, and any interactions they have with 88rising’s artist roster.
of respondents
Were not aware of 88rising's new weekly releases
of user interviewees
Were not aware of the majority Of Artists signed to 88rising
of respondents
believe that 88rising is declining in popularity
of respondents
attributed their decline to a lack of brand engagement
YouTube currently serves as 88rising’s main platform to share original content featuring their various artists. However, music videos, behind-the-scenes, interviews, and other variety show-esque content are burried and scattered across various channels, making it challenging for fans to discover and connect with their favorite artists.
Additionally, 88rising’s current website only focuses on merchandise sales, lacking any clarity on their current roster of artists, what the brand is about, and any information about the personalities surrounding the brand.
Surface collab music videos & BTS with established talents as a way for fans to discover new and lesser-known 88rising artists, creating engaging and shareable moments to help introduce casual fans to the label’s diverse roster.
Leverage the brand’s unique Asian American identity by showcasing artist personalities at the forefront. Use the website to personify 88rising’s artists in a relatable light for audiences to easily connect with, fostering deeper fan engagement.
Landing on the homepage, we provide a starting point to help draw in casual audiences through the use of language. Artists are organized by their respective home countries, additionally indicated by the menu bar below. The word “Rising” is repeated in different languages as a way to immediately draw a fan’s attention to a country they have a personal connection to, with catchy music videos playing on hover to encourage exploration of the rest of the countries.
Clicking into a country reveals all the artists from that region, introducing fans to artists who may share a similar cultural background. On the right side of the screen, highlighted collaborations offer exposure for lesser-known 88rising artists, providing fans with opportunities to connect and discover new talent and music.
Each collab song is given its own page, highlighting artist voices and behind-the-scenes content to give fans more ways to personally connect with their favorite artists. By breaking away from traditional grids, our distinctive style crafts a vibrant and memorable experience, emphasizing how 88rising sets itself apart from conventional artists. The use of opposing motions as you scroll through the page reflects 88rising's clash of Eastern and Western cultures.
Each collab song is given its own page, highlighting artist voices and behind-the-scenes content to give fans more ways to personally connect with their favorite artists. By breaking away from traditional grids, our distinctive style crafts a vibrant and memorable experience, emphasizing how 88rising sets itself apart from conventional artists. The use of opposing motions as you scroll through the page reflects 88rising's clash of Eastern and Western cultures.
Individual artist pages allow fans to dive into an artist's discovery in a unique and immersive format. A biography section features an intimate photo stack motif, organizing large amounts of relatable and personal artist content into a single screen, allowing fans to easily go down a rabbit hole for the artists they find intriguing.
Additionally, fans can explore an artist's song discovery and merchandise page, with the artists' music videos playing in the background to help provide an immersive environment.
As our user research pointed out that a majority of 88rising fans were unaware of the label’s newer releases, a central touchpoint on our redesigned website is our upcoming releases page. New songs can generate excitement within fans and help keep 88rising relevant, thus this page offers an easy way to access their latest drops, organized in a linear calendar inspired by waveform lines. Additionally, the page teases what might be coming up for the label, generating anticipation and awareness within 88rising’s fanbase.
As many fans consume music-related content through mobile devices, our next step is to transfer our desktop design into a mobile-friendly experience. This would require experimenting with how the interactions and content layout could transfer to smaller screen sizes with a touch-based interaction system, especially as the desktop design is quite reliant on hover-based interactions.
Visually, this was the most impressive and demanding project I've ever worked on, especially considering that all of the visual direction, interaction design, and prototyping occurred within a week. As the lead designer, I was responsible for solely creating all of the work you see above, assisted by my group-mates Alex, entirely designing the mobile screens and helping me prototype interactions, and Luke, Claret, and Terence, who put weeks worth of hours into coming up with experimentations for each section of the site, eventually inspiring the direction of the final product, and an insurmountable amount of effort into making sure our research was sound.
This project taught me a lot about design process and research. As our first experience design project, our group really struggled to understand how to pick the right problems to tackle and pair it with research that compelled a solution into existence. While we really fumbled during this process, examining over 60+ clients and spending over 5 of our 7 weeks looking for the right problem, the long days spent examining our research from every angle, conducting multiple user interviews, running design sprints, and constantly questioning ourselves has imbued new perspectives that I now approach every new project with.
Thank you to my team for suffering along with me.
Thank you to Professor Russell Taylor, an amazing mentor I'll deeply miss, and our TA Jenny Nguyen, our best friend. We're forever grateful.
And thank you for taking the time to go through this journey with us.
😇😇😇
