Project Highlights

• Site Redesign

  A Zune community

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Music Your Way

In fall of 2007, Microsoft Zune had just launched their 2.0 web design. But, the new site wasn't doing everything they wanted. They needed to add new features, enhance social networking aspects and expose more of the rich content underneath. The Zune team called Odopod in November and asked us to help with strategy across the entire Zune experience, as well as to create a new site visual design that would push beyond what was currently in place.

We dug in, spending the first eight weeks of the engagement reimagining the Zune experience altogether. We focused on finding intuitive ways to leverage the connectivity of the device to connect the site and software in order to provide for a more connected, social networked experience.

We focused much of our effort on finding ways to better integrate aspects of both Zune's social networking features and merchandising functions into the site. Limitations with the back-end systems prevented integrated music purchasing, but other Zune products are presented in a more contextually relevant way.

We also created a new visual design with a more contemporary expression, one that is crisper and simpler, spotlighting the music and the social networking features we redesigned and built from scratch. Finally, the site is template-based so is programmatically simple to implement.

The new site launched in October 2008 and was well-received: the new Odopod design has been able to scale to meet new and emerging features, and the Zune team has been able to able to make site updates on their own due to the clear template design.

It's all about more music, smarter layouts and community powered discovery.