How can audio amplify your workout?
This was the central question the Interaction Design Master students at the Estonian Academy of Arts worked on for 4 weeks while DUX was mentoring them along the way. The client? None other than Spotify, which needs no introduction. This was the first time for Spotify to do something with students as well, so it was basically a pilot program.
Spotify has already been dealing with the topic Health & Fitness for a while, so they saw it fitting to let the students work on this same subject matter and see what kind of ideas flow out.
Not a bad project to end the school year with, right? But before anyone could celebrate there was lots of work to still be done. After an initial kick-off in Spotify’s Stockholm HQ on the 29th of April, the students started the project — all under the watchful eyes of Kevin and Kristian.
The process
Research
Ideation
First ideas internal presentation
Midterm presentation (with Design Lead Anna from Spotify)
Prototyping
Video
Internal pre-presentation
Final presentation (at Spotify’s Stockholm HQ)
The mentoring
This was the second time DUX was asked to mentor the students during the Service Design project. We try to bring in a certain sense of “realism”–what does it mean to be a designer in a business environment, instead of an academic one?
This means that you’re not just designing for your end-user, but you also take into account how it helps the business model. That being said, as Spotify was looking for fresh ideas, we agreed not every single detail had to be thought through or worked out and the bigger concept was what mattered.
The result
On the 29th of May, we all went back to Stockholm for the final presentations. The students worked intensely for 4 weeks to get this moment with confidence and it paid off. Spotify was very pleased with the results, especially considering the short timeline. The variety of ideas tackled not only physical health and fitness, but also mental health and the possibility to escape from your surroundings. Every idea was unique in its own way.
For us as mentors it was a great experience to see the evolution of the students through the process. To see how their ideas solidified and how they themselves grew as they got more confident.
Read about their ideas soon on the IxD.MA blog
