Earworm

You see, during the era of Zune (#RIP), I was captivated by what I considered the most aesthetically pleasing music app/player. The hardware highlight was the Zune HD, an alluring device that regrettably remained exclusive to the United States. On the software front, Zune introduced a breath of fresh air, deviating from established design and usability conventions. The ethos was centered around “content is the king.” Instead of overwhelming users with an excess of 3D buttons, countless gradients, and ostentatious embellishments, the interface featured elegantly simple design elements, accompanied predominantly by captivating images relevant to the content at hand.

Particularly during the Windows Phone 7/8 era, the Zune app was an evolution of this vision. When conceiving “earworm,” I was determined to maintain the lively, colorful essence that Zune embodied, while also expanding its scope.

The start screen encompasses a three-sided panorama design. The first pivot serves as the main page, featuring a “My Top Five” section where you can pin your favorite artists, albums, songs, playlists, or genres. If selecting your favorites isn’t your preference, you can let earworm automatically pin them based on your music tastes.

Beneath the favorites section lies the “New Music” strip, which displays the recently added tracks.

The second pivot within the panorama is the “Recently Played” list, showcasing the music you’ve recently listened to. Additionally, there’s an option to clear the list if desired.

The third and final pivot offers a shortcut section for artists, albums, songs, genres, and playlists. It’s worth noting that earworm was intended to be integrated with Xbox Music (now Groove), enabling the purchase and streaming of music from that platform as well.

The artist view offers two choices for displaying information.

The initial option involves a grid of tiles, each featuring photos of the artists. These tiles can also exhibit movement or flipping, revealing additional details about the artist.

Alternatively, there’s the standard list view, which presents artist thumbnails alongside their respective names.

During the initial concept phase, I integrated a miniplayer that would remain fixed at the bottom of the screen while a song was playing. However, upon further consideration, I opted against this approach. Windows Phone offers a convenient feature where pressing a volume button triggers audio controls that emerge from the top of the screen. This functionality rendered the miniplayer somewhat unnecessary. Nonetheless, here’s a glimpse of what the miniplayer design entailed.

Zune’s visual superiority extended to another noteworthy feature: lockscreen support during the Windows Phone 7/7.5 era, and notably, the screensaver mode in its Windows desktop iteration. The aesthetic appeal was undeniable.

When tasked with implementing something similarly sophisticated yet refined, I created my iteration of the lockscreen support, striving to capture that same charm.