This is the culminating studio of the MIDEA program (Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts). In this studio, students work in close collaboration with an external client, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Grad Studio aims to help students strengthen and document their design capacities and help them become job-ready in the design industry. The learning outcomes of this studio include advanced documentation and reporting of research-led design work, delivering evidence-based design presentations, and critically reflecting upon self and peer practices as a design professional.
With research consistently highlighting the unmet need among young Australians for music discovery, this studio brief calls for the promotion of local and domestic artists, as well as facilitating seamless music discovery. The need is especially acute in relation to new Australian artists. Currently, the ABC’s product suite offers limited opportunities for this beyond radio listening, though triple j’s Unearthed serves as a unique content repository for discovery by presenting an extensive collection of Australian music. The question posed by this brief is: How can the rich catalogue of Unearthed be creatively leveraged within the product suite in order to enrich user experience, foster engagement and introduce novel features?
The goal of facilitating seamless music discovery experiences centres on the challenge of integrating Unearthed’s music catalogue into other products while preserving the integrity of the Unearthed site itself. Meanwhile, there is also a need to showcase and promote emerging and established local artists from Australia to a broader audience. The primary challenge lies in achieving these goals without making significant changes to the Unearthed site itself, so proposed integration designs aim to enhance the user experience while respecting the unique identity and functionality of Unearthed.
