Approach 2_TylerR

Title: Waves

Abstract: A social app that is based on connecting you to the rest of the world through sound.

Visuals:

Background: Most social media apps today are engineered to take your time and turn it into their profit. They use tactics to fixate your attention on their product for periods at a time. When using these apps, you are handing your time away to bottomless feeds of photos, videos, and opinions. The intent of social media was to connect us to the rest of the world, but in doing so one could argue that it has driven us further into our own corners. What if there was a social app that let you experience more of the world and not be glued to your phone at the same time.

Explanation: This social media app attempts to give the user a more immersive experience of the real world while limiting time spent looking at their phone. It is based on recording and sharing audio files between a network of users. The fact that it is audio based gives the user much more freedom as they do not have to be staring at the screen while using the app. Once you have recorded a clip you have the ability to add basic EQ, compression, and reverb to the file, as well as mark the location of where the clip was recorded. The map feature gives you the ability to explore anywhere in the world to listen to. This app also takes away the vertical timeline for viewing posts. Instead, it uses a grid layout to give the user a rigid boundary between the sets of posts.

The app has three main functions, map, record, and grid. The map and grid are used for discovering new work while record allows you to capture your own audio to share. There is also a place where you can organize saved clips into a playlist. The blue “+” icon allows you to easily add a track to your playlist, while the green check mark alerts an algorithm that you would like to hear more tracks of that style. The red “X” performs the opposite function, making the app aware that you disliked that certain track to never be shown again and further narrow posts to your liking.

This app is targeted to people who are interested in audio, specifically field recordings, and people who are looking to discover new things via social media without becoming trapped in an app. By making the effects page simple and easy to use it gives beginners an intro to how basic audio effects work, but also gives people with intermediate and advance knowledge an quick an easy way to edit their clips before uploading.

Credits: I thought having a platform for sharing field recordings from around the world would be interesting. I also feel that it is to easy to become engulfed in most social media apps today.

Budget:

Time: 4-6 months for development

Money: $15,00 (development, design, marketing)