Amoeba Music

Amoeba Music is an institution. They've hosted performances by significant artists and are a West Hollywood landmark. But you may not assume this of them when looking at their website...

Role

Design Lead

Tools

Figma, FigJam, Zoom

Timeline

2 Weeks

Project Overview

Amoeba Music is an institution. They’ve hosted performances by significant artists such as Lana Del Rey, Gary Numan, and Band of Horses. In addition, their long-running show promoting music and physical media, “What’s in my Bag” frequently reaches one million views per episode and has featured such artists as Metallica, Dave Grohl, and Childish Gambino. 

Given all of this, you might expect that their website would be reflective of this status. However, you would be wrong. 

Amoeba Music

An argument could be made that their current aesthetic acts in concert with Amoeba’s brand. They are grungy and consciously so. But ideally these design choices will also work in the interests of those navigating the website. 

When I was deciding whether or not to do this redesign, I asked a few friends and family members to check it out and to tell me what they thought. 

They didn’t enjoy themselves. 

Aesthetics aside - The site contains many usability issues largely concerning accessibility. Small buttons, small text, confusing site architecture etc. 

Amoeba is a great business. Make no mistake, I love them. And it is with love that I embarked on this redesign.

Goals: 

To build a desktop ecommerce experience that maintains Amoeba’s identity and doesn’t discourage users from making online purchases with them. To do so, users must be able to successfully: 

  1. Create an account and intuitively understand what having an account allows them to do.
  2. Find items that they are looking for/browse effectively.
  3. Easily move the item to the cart/save it to their favorites.
  4. Easily complete the purchase

(More coming soon...)