Beyond Oblivion (Boinc) Music Service
The revolutionary music service that almost was.
The Revolutionary Music Startup that Almost Was
You may not have heard of it, but in 2010 Beyond Oblivion was primed to be a real contender for the music-service heavyweight title. With over $600M in capital and Rupert Murdoch on its board, the CEO was orchestrating many moving pieces to create a music ecosystem intended to launch with a big splash. The system would work on most of your devices, play the music you already owned (through musical-thumbprint technology), and deliver a world-class user experience. To our CEO, design and UX were of paramount importance.
- Design team hiring & management
- Design research
- Concept development & testing
- Creative direction and visual design
- Information architecture
- Interaction models & prototypes
- Detailed UI design
- Cross-platform design system
Establishing a Visionary MVP
We had an aggressive schedule — launch within the year — and needed an MVP. The basics included a music library, a social experience led by “gurus” for recommendations, and a CEO-led vision of a molecule-based discovery system. We worked on the multi-platform music service first.
Testing the Thesis
After assessing the existing designs, our team suggested alternative information architectures that would give users a stronger sense of music ownership. We ran participatory design sessions, showing existing designs and new concepts in qualitative interviews to learn how target users listen to music — which helped prioritize features.
Boinc Visual Style
The MVP player was a good first step, but the visual style didn’t fully address the CEO’s darker, more dystopian vision. With a growing internal team, we explored alternate directions and expanded the platform to address TV interfaces.
The Way Forward
So What Happened?
The company closed abruptly in December 2011 — we were weeks away from launching our MVP. A more modest vision of Boinc eventually rebooted and launched in Venezuela in 2013, using our MVP design.
