Concept • Mobile App Design

Building Memory Through Media Habits

Role

Sole Designer & Researcher

Timeline

May 2025 - July 2025

Tools

Figma, Miro, Notion, Maze, Illustrator

Introduction

We Are What We Consume

Our media habits are extensions of ourselves: the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read. Web and mobile technologies allow us to record, catalog, and curate our experiences, yet no platform lets us effectively organize all forms of media together.

Solution

Record Your Media Consumption All In One Place

While many apps today exclusively focus on consumption of a single medium, I decided to build a tool that allows users to record and reflect on all types of media consumption through timebased or custom-made moodboards. I set out to create an experience that allows users to not only draw connections between different types of media, but to show how the media we consume reflects our everyday lives.

Your Month in Media

Skip the tedium of tracking what you’ve watched, read, or listened to. Aulos generates a monthly multimedia moodboard based on your connected media accounts—ready to refine and make your own.

See Your Habits Evolve

Aulos logs your cross-platform media habits and gives you insights by comparing each month’s consumption. See what changed, what stuck, and what shaped your inner world.

Make It Your Own

Go deeper with custom top 10 lists, themed moodboards, or personal leaderboards. Add images and notes, and connections to turn your media memories into rich creative artifacts.

01. RESEARCH

Starting with White Paper Research, I felt that it was important to learn more about the relationship between music and other forms of media on memory and emotional processing.

Music as a Vehicle For Memory

The relationship between music and memory has long been recognized, but the term Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories (MEAMs) was formalized in the early 2000’s by cognitive neuroscientist Petr Janata and colleagues. MEAM’s describe the vivid, emotionally resonant memories triggered by hearing music from our past.

Research on MEAM’s reveal that music is an extremely effective tool for memory recall and can also promote a stronger sense of self and strengthen social bonds through shared musical experiences.

Nostalgia Has Gone Digital

With over two decades of digital history behind us, social media platforms have become more than just for sharing moments in the present—they are archives of personal memories. A longitudinal study from the University of Gothenburg and University West followed eleven social media users for ten years and found that users derived joy from revisiting past posts, photos, and shared moments.

Features like Snapchat Memories, Spotify Wrapped, and automated photo slideshows in default photo apps show how technology caters to our desire for nostalgia, embedding it into everyday user experience.

Key Insight

Music and media are central to how we remember, understand, and share our personal histories—and technology has become the primary vehicle for engaging with these memories. Designing an interface that catalogs personal media and facilitates meaningful reflection has the potential to offer a deeply resonant and valuable user experience.

Competitive Analysis

I analyzed four competitors—Last.fm, Letterboxd, Pinterest, and Notion—each a leader in its respective domain: music tracking, film/TV logging, visual moodboarding, and flexible note-taking.

The matrix highlights clear market gaps Aulos is uniquely positioned to fill, most notably, the support for multiple media types, visual moodboarding, and chronological organization of media.

By combining intuitive, time-based media organization with cross-media cataloging and shareable experiences, Aulos has the potential to carve out a powerful niche in the digital note-taking and media space—bridging self reflection with creative self-expression in a way existing platforms do not.

02. EMPATHIZE

Defining user needs and pain points.

User Surveys

To learn more about how users engage with various media and track their consumption, I designed a survey that asks participants to share their experiences.

Survey Analysis

Pain Points

While it wasn’t surprising that participants track their media consumption in some form—whether to remember favorite songs, shows, or movies—what stood out was the depth and intentionality behind these practices. Many users go far beyond casual bookmarking, engaging in detailed logging, playlist curation, or visual documentation. This level of engagement suggests a strong personal and emotional connection to media consumption, and a clear desire for tools that support and enhance that relationship.

My survey also explored the problems that users face while tracking their media consumption. The main problems with media tracking identified by my survey were that:

1: Tedium: Media tracking is often a manual and time-consuming process, leading some users to lose interest or struggle to maintain the habit.

2: Commitment and Consistency: With busy schedules and competing responsibilities, users frequently cited a lack of time or mental bandwidth to track media consistently, even when they want to.

3: Platform Overload: Many users reported frustration with needing to juggle multiple apps to track different types of media. This fragmentation can feel overwhelming and makes it harder to see the bigger picture of one’s media habits.

Problem Statement

Based on insights from user research, how might we design a mobile experience that empowers users to:

  1. Seamlessly document and organize multiple types of media (music, film, images, books, etc.) within a single, visually-driven moodboard

  2. Strike a balance between structured layouts and personalized customization

  3. Provide visual summaries and consumption analytics that help users recognize patterns, track their evolving tastes, and build self-awareness over time

03. IDEATE

Finding design solutions based off user research.

Information Architecture

I designed an information architecture that defined the structure of the experience and organized its core features.

Low Fidelity Paper Wireframes

I drafted 40 low fidelity wireframes to test different ways to organize information in my app’s design. These served as valuable references as I began increasing the fidelity of wireframes.

04. PROTOTYPE

Building an experience to meet user needs.

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

Building off the structure of my low fidelity wireframes, I added content and simple prototyping capabilities, creating an MVP for user testing.

Usability Testing

I conducted usability testing with 6 participants where I asked users to:

  1. Complete onboarding

  2. Create a board

  3. Find their most played songs for the month

  4. Connect more streaming apps inside the app

Implementing Feedback #1

Reducing Friction in Onboarding

Pain Point

Asking users to connect ALL of their streaming platforms at once is time consuming and likely to increase dropoff.

Implementing Feedback #2

Improving the “Create Board” Flow

Pain Point

CTA’s such as adding a title or description and button placement such as “Add Media” were not clear to users.

Solution

Ask users to pick their go-to streaming service per category.

Limit to only Music and TV / Movies. User research indicated that these categories are the most commonly used, but other media types are not.

Solution

Create an easer, step by step flow to help guide users towards creating a board.

Minor Iteration #1

Changed text to “New,” repositioned to a floating badge overlay, added border for image separation.

Improved “New” Indicator on Boards

Increased icon size, reduced spacing, created custom icons.

Minor Iteration #2

Improved Bottom Navigation Bar

Design System

05. HI-FI DESIGN

Connect Your Media Apps

Select your your go-to media apps in onboarding. Connect the rest in settings.

Make Meaning Of Your Habits

Reflect on your consumption habits. Discover the media that defined your month with accurate, powerful insights.

Create A Board With The Media That Inspires You

Experience a streamlined approach to logging media that fit together.

06. REFLECTION

Reflection

Build Fast, Test Early, Receive Feedback

Perfectionism can hold designers back. It’s tempting to spend hours prototyping micro-interactions or constantly rebuilding the perfect structure for an interface.

However later in the design process, I found that it was much more effective to focus on the essentials, move to the next deliverable, get feedback early, and iterate accordingly. This approach allowed me to avoid building something that ultamitely didn’t meet any user goal or divert focus away from the app’s overall mission.

Constraints, especially time constraints, create clarity.

Explorations

#1: Bring More Users Into the Process

Due to time and logistical constraints, I was not able to conduct user interviews or include more participants in testing cycles. More data, whether that be a larger and more diverse user base or insightful qualitative data from interviews, will shed light on better ways to improve the design of the app. Luckily, the generousity of my participants and valuable feedback from the design community allowed me to iterate this project to the best of its ability.

#2: Improve and Expand Sharing Features

User research revealed that the ability to share their moodboards with others was important. With more time, I would explore ways to integrate social features to Aulos, such as introducing a Community or Explore tab, which could include search functionalites or an algorythm-based feed.

#3 Backend Considerations

While every operating systems and several apps today collect data from other applications and organize the information within their interface, I would have liked to explore how collecting data from other media-based apps would function in this concept.