Rethinking a music app around mood and video

The redesign

Improving my own past work

VAP is a redesign of an earlier project of mine. Rather than start from a blank canvas, I treated my past UI/UX as the brief: I re-evaluated its data and flows, found where it fell short, and rebuilt it into a retro-inspired, AI-driven music and video platform that curates around the user's mood. The questions below are the ones real listeners kept asking, and the ones this redesign set out to answer.

What listeners kept asking: "I'm working out, I want something exciting." "I'm in a good mood, should I play something sad?" "I want the artist's video and radio too." "Something for the commute?" "Show my playlists simply." "It's hard to find singers I like."

User Research

The market is shifting from music to video

The redesign started from market data, not a hunch. To ground it, I studied how the MZ generation actually listens and watches, benchmarked Korea's leading services, and traced the global move from downloads to streaming. Three findings shaped every decision that followed.

Market share, music and video

Among MZ-generation users, Melon leads music while Netflix dominates video, the two poles the redesign had to bridge.

Korea's music services, up close

I looked at how Melon, YouTube Music, and Genie compete: Melon's dominance slipping on pricing, YouTube Music riding bundled Premium video, and Genie leaning on telecom tie-ins. The common thread is that music platforms are all racing to add video.

From music to video

The clearest signal was directional: habits are shifting from music toward video, driven by changes in distribution and the rising importance of cost-effective, video-rich platforms. Global consumption data shows downloads falling and streaming climbing from 2012 onward.

Korea and the US, one direction

Both markets lean the same way: toward streaming platforms that feel personal and AI-tailored, from Genie Music to Spotify. That shared pull toward a personalized, user-specific experience set the target for VAP.

Concept

Vaporize: delicate, soft, tech

The research pointed to one idea: a music and video service that feels like vapor, delicate, soft, and quietly technological. Three design keywords carried that concept through every screen and became the backbone of the brand.

Personas

Two listeners, two unmet needs

Persona work fine-tuned the target audience and surfaced their specific needs. Two people captured the split the redesign had to serve: Steve, who cannot live without music and wants suggestions that match his mood, and Emma, an idol superfan who wants every artist video in one organized place.

Brand & foundation

A new identity: 'vaporize'

With the concept set, I rebuilt the brand system from the logo out. The old bold-red mark did not fit a calm, technological feel, so I redrew the 'V' from 'vaporize' as a sleek, neon-striped mark, then defined its variations, color, type, iconography, and a cleaner information architecture.

Logo, before and after

From a heavy red wordmark to a light neon 'V', a mark that reads as vapor: delicate, soft, and technical.

Logo variations and color

One mark, four uses: before, application icon, in-app, and printable. The palette pairs a soft pastel blue with near-black to convey music in a soothing, visually comfortable way.

Icons and type

A custom icon set for the tabs and player, with Helvetica for headings and SF Pro for body: clean, legible, and quietly modern.

Information architecture

An IA pass reorganized everything into four clear tabs: Home, Search, Streaming, and MYMY, so mood-based music and artist video each had an obvious home.

Before & after

Five sections, rebuilt

Each change came from a real friction point in the old design. Here is the earlier version next to the redesign, section by section.

01

Navigation bar

The original hid a circular playback control at the bottom. I replaced it with a clean bottom bar (Home, Search, Streaming, MYMY) and moved playback into the now-larger screen: swipe to change track, long-press for full detail. Notchless phones freed the space to make this the obvious move.

02

Streaming page

I promoted the high-demand video tab into the navigation, moved the less-used equalizer into the player, and reorganized the video experience by clear categories: Streaming, Radio, and Artist's Channels.

03

Search page

Ranking and search lived in separate tabs, so new music was hard to find. I merged them into one search space that surfaces rankings and tag recommendations together.

04

Player

The playback screen went from a cramped pop-up that barely showed the track to a full-screen layout, giving the music, artwork, and controls room to breathe.

05

Equalizer

I added a 3D equalizer with contextual presets and a custom My EQ, and restyled it to fit the pastel-and-dark brand rather than sitting apart from it.

The final design

The new VAP

The finished redesign across its four tabs: a mood-based home, a merged search, an artist-and-video streaming hub, and a reorganized library. Click any screen to see it larger.

Reflection

What redesigning my own work taught me

Going back to my past project made the value of research obvious: the strongest changes, full-screen playback, contextual EQ, mood-based tabs, and an artist home for video, all traced back to a real question a listener had asked. AI and video only earned their place when each gave the user a clear reason and an easy way to steer. The honest next step is testing whether mood-based recommendation truly beats genre browsing with real users.