Nora is a digital platform that provides insightful information on all your favorite songs. The idea behind Nora came from two USC undergrad students with a passion for music production, and together they founded a product that hopes to give musicians, and anyone else, really, the opportunity to access exclusive information on songs and musicians.

This project is currently under an NDA

Although I cant share much about the project itself, I can share a bit about what I have learned working on it.

Designing in teams can be very rewarding

I was the second product designer at Nora, which meant I had to learn how to go through the design process with another person. Since this was my first time working closely alongside another designer, I had to learn how to manage multiple people working on one product. I realized that getting to collaborate closely with someone within your division, versus just collaborating with people in outside divisions such as developers, can be a very rewarding experience. You get to bounce ideas off of each other and play to each others strengths.

Communication can make or break the entire process

Working not only with multiple designers but also with multiple people in other divisions, you begin to realize how important it is to communicate the little things. With division specific tasks, things would redundantly get done twice (or even worse, not at all) when there wasn't clear communication within the team. With outside divisions such as developers, small changes had to be communicated in order to keep the same magic from prototype to launch. It was very important to find the balance in communication.

If you have ideas, speak up

I'm a music guy. I produce, I'm in a band, and aside from working on Nora I am also one of Nora's early users. When you understand the product and all of its use cases, you begin to see what it's missing, what could be improved, or what isn't necessary. Whenever I noticed small (or sometimes large) things like this, I always politely brought them up from the perspective of a user. I think having that insight can be super helpful, and I learned it's important to mention those things in order to make a more user-focused product.