The Background
During my time at Orange’s R&D division in Paris, I led a series of forward-thinking projects exploring how people discover, enjoy, and share music in the digital age.
With the music industry undergoing massive transformation, from physical CDs to streaming, I initiated a deep dive into the full lifecycle of music interaction, from discovery and selection to listening, curation, and social sharing.
My role was both strategic and hands-on: leading user research, facilitating co-creation workshops, prototyping new services, and collaborating closely with Orange’s product and marketing teams.
This foundational work laid the groundwork for several key initiatives, including the Orange Music Player, Orange Music Cast, Orange Music Store, Univers Musical proof of concept, and the brand experience project Sound of Orange.
The Problem
Despite rising demand for digital music, many early services treated music consumption as transactional, focusing narrowly on purchasing or downloading tracks. Users, however, had far more nuanced needs and behaviors: they discovered music socially, curated playlists emotionally, and wanted seamless access across devices.
The services available at the time often suffered from fragmented experiences, poor recommendations, and limited integration between discovery, purchasing, and listening. For Orange, this was a strategic risk, music was a core driver of mobile and internet engagement, yet the offerings didn’t reflect the richness of user expectations.
We needed to rethink music not as a static product, but as a dynamic and emotional journey : one that could be better served through cohesive, user-centered services.
The Solution
We began with a detailed ethnographic study of the music lifecycle, mapping how users interacted with music across contexts, alone, socially, on-the-go, or at home. From this, we designed and iterated on multiple solutions.
- Orange Music Player offered a sleek, intuitive interface for managing and playing digital music, while Orange Music Cast introduced new ways to share music across devices and social circles.
- For Orange Music Store, we expanded the experience to include a wishlist, personalized recommendations, and smarter browsing, features that emerged directly from user interviews and usability testing.
- Univers Musical, emerged as a breakthrough concept: a platform where fans could follow everything about their favorite artists whether new releases, concerts, news, videos, & social updates, in one immersive experience. It transformed passive listening into an active fan journey.
- To reinforce emotional engagement with the Orange brand, I also initiated Sound of Orange, a project to define an auditory identity and infuse Orange products with cohesive sonic branding.
Each initiative was developed using iterative design and co-creation with real users, ensuring the experience evolved from their needs, not assumptions.
The Benefits
These initiatives significantly elevated Orange’s position in the digital music landscape. By focusing on the full emotional and experiential arc of music lovers, we increased user engagement, loyalty, and time spent within Orange’s digital environment.
- Univers Musical in particular served as a blueprint for fan-centered design, inspiring future innovation in content platforms.
- The redesigned Music Store saw increased conversions and retention,
- while Music Cast prefigured today’s social streaming trends.
- The Sound of Orange project gave the brand a recognizable audio signature, reinforcing identity across touchpoints.
Collectively, this portfolio of work demonstrated the power of combining deep user understanding with thoughtful service design to create digital experiences that were not only functional, but loved.
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