Splice

Introduction

As the eighth employee and the first design hire at Splice, I contributed to the company’s impressive growth over five years. I joined Splice during the Seed Stage, shortly before Series A. By year three, Splice graduated from a small team of 10 to an established company with over 100 employees. I concentrated on delivering product UI + UX design while also supporting product marketing. I built landing pages and HTML marketing emails and updated the UI to incorporate creative marketing. During a significant rebrand, I collaborated closely with the engineering team to deploy a reskin to the desktop app and website.

The Challenge

I wanted to help the company revolutionize music production by making creative software more accessible and collaborative. With such a complex subject matter, the team became challenged with building intuitive and user-friendly tools that would resonate with musicians and producers while supporting the company’s rapid growth and evolving brand identity. I embraced this challenge, using my design expertise and adaptability to create inventive solutions that met both the company’s and users’ needs.

Beat Maker

Beat Maker gives anyone with a web browser the power to orchestrate sequenced beats using samples from Splice Sounds. The tool became a favorite way to learn about music production using an intuitive and approachable user interface—the step sequencer. It’s also free to use, requiring only a web browser and internet connection.

Notably, the Beat Maker captured the attention of youth in used in classrooms and the not-for-profit Building Beats, which seeks to empower youth through music. In November 2018, Splice collaborated with Building Beats to launch a sample pack, ‘The Fantastic Sounds of Jay Dee,’ to commemorate Jay Dee, aka Jay Dilla’s, life and lasting impact on the music production community. Splice donated the proceeds to Building Beats’ mission.

Splice Desktop

As Product Design Lead at Splice in 2017, I collaborated with a Product Manager and a UX Designer to rebrand the Splice Desktop app. The goal solved a common user issue – at the time, Splice Desktop lived in the toolbar and would hide when focusing on another window. After speaking with users, the product design team learned that experienced music producers wanted more consistent access to the Splice Desktop App when working in a DAW (digital audio workstation).

It’s a critical detail because a minor inconvenience can render creative tools useless to even the most eager users, especially when delivering a creative tool. The product design team learned through extended user research that this drove the musician to use the drag-and-drop feature when using Splice Sounds, increasing downloads (and revenue) while allowing users to explore and experiment more easily.

Conclusion

Rapid growth, a variety of projects, and a collaborative spirit marked my time with Splice. As the first design hire, I played a pivotal role in shaping the user experience and visual identity of Splice’s products, contributing to the company’s success and expansion in the music production industry. Subscribe to Splice Sounds to experience the desktop app in action.