Sony Music Entertainment

Sony: Sound Connect

App Redesign To Improve Accessibility, Navigation and Design

2025

This project was initially completed over a 3 day period but after completing the first wireframe, I wanted to take it further and add my flair for design to the app. The focus was to develop a high fidelity redesign of Sony's Sound Connect App. An app that helps users make improvements to their listening experience with their Sony products.

Objectives: Make the user experience seamless, simplify the user flow and implement elements of accessibility.

My Role: UI/UX Designer

The Problem

Users of this app experience a number of frustrations when using it. Due to this, they become dissatisfied and proceed to return their Sony products, specifically the headphones due to poor app usage and user frustrations such as:

Navigation difficulites
Lack of accessibility considerations
Out dated design

The Heurstic Evaluation

Affintiy Mapping

As a user of the app myself, I took an internal survey of the issues I myself experienced while using the app and I the reviews that were left from other users on the app store. This is where I gathered my data. The main pain points were:

NAVIGATION: People experienced confusion while navigating the app. They were unable to move past certain pages or find crucial aspects such as the equalizer. They also experienced difficulty setting up their accounts.
ACCESSIBILITY: Most people had the sentiment that there was a lack of accessibility when the app was developed. They wanted more ways to use their Sony devices but through the app instead of hearing the feedback notifications.
DESIGN: There were many complaints with the current ui. Many thought it is outdated, the design is poor and that the settings they initiated would be reset to the default when the device was turned off and on.
RESPONSIVENESS: There was small demographic that would use the app on their iPads. They found that the app is not responsive at all on the iPad and a mini phone version of the app would be displayed.

As this was a 3 day project initially, I focused on solving the first 3 pain points.

Navigation

User Journey

The first pain point many users had was difficulty navigating the app or finding certain controls such as the equalizer. To solve this, I redid the apps user journey and changed the structure of the apps navigation to make it less complex.

Added a favorites page that allows users to add their most used widgets.
Made the devices page solely dedicated to what devices the user has.
I removed the need to click on each section separately and made pages for the sound controls and system settings. This would eliminate the navigation confusion as all of the sound controls are on one page and all of the system settings are on one page.
Changed the activity page layout and added a more visually appealing version of the weekly headphone usage section in order for users to see if their usage is at normal or dangerous levels.

Accessibility Considerations

The second pain point address was the lack of accessibility considerations. Users wanted more ways to use their Sony devices but through the app instead of hearing the feedback notifications or using the touch sensor on their headphones. I addressed this by:

Adding a setting that allows the user to turn off the audio notifications. As user's with audio processing issues found the notifications to give them sensory overload, this would eliminate that issue.
Adding in buttons for users to control their music through the app. This was taken into account as some users may not be able to reach the touch sensor on the headphones when they are wearing them.
Visual cue of which devices are connected and playing music in the app through the use of visual audio waves.
An added hearing health monitor that will let users know their headphone usage throughout the week, giving them tips on how to reduce their usage or if they are keeping within a healthy range.

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Design

The third pain point addressed was the outdated design. Although I did take considerations from Sony's existing brand guidelines, I did want to make this app interesting for the users visually and have some aspects of my creativity. I did this by:

Making the app similar to a DJ board. This would make the user feel like they are in control of their own DJ set while listening to their devices. Not only making it functional, but fun to use.
- Music track adjuster that uses color to indicate lowest to highest in any range.
- Board switch that changes color to indicate whether the switch is on or off.
- Using visual audio waves similar to the DJ boards audio waves.
Taking advantage of Sony's brand colors and using them to develop a fun and interesting interface.

The fonts I selected were chosen to elevate Sony’s brand identity, emphasizing power and clean structure. For the color palette, I adhered to Sony’s guidelines by using dark tones paired with white typography to create strong contrast and clarity. While black and white serve as the primary colors, I introduced red, orange, and blue as accent tones, drawing inspiration from the vibrant lights on a DJ deck. These accents not only capture the energy and excitement of music but also convey a sense of power and dynamism to the user.

Competitor Heuristic Evaluation

I looked at other apps that require users to connect their devices, input personal data and change settings on them. I took note of how they implemented accessibility in their designs and what made their user flows not complex. Apps such as Google Home and Spotify.

Google Home App

The app had simplicity in their interface design. This would not overwhelm the user with clutter and create ease of navigation.
The system status was consistent which would allow the user to know which devices are connected and playing.

Spotify App

The app is minimalistic but takes advantage of prominent visuals which stand out to the user.
Their language matches the real world as they use familiar terms that majority of users will understand.
The system status is very effective as it provides immediate feedback to the user eg: when a song is liked/unliked.

1st Prototype

This initial prototype was finished by the initial 3 day deadline. In this prototype, I had focused on solving the 3 main pain points I outlined. This did not leave a lot of time to develop the in depth design guideline I created after the deadline. However, this design is still clean, structured well and uses Sony's fonts and branding colors, staying true to Sony's branding as a whole.

The Final Prototype

This prototype takes into consideration the 3 main pain points that users expressed in the reviews on the app store: complex navigation, lack of accessibility consideration and an outdated design. By changing the user journey and restructuring the page layouts, adding in controls and settings that allow users to with accessibility needs to use the app effectively and creating a design that is not only functional but visually interesting, this app redesign will improve the user experience exponentially. Successfully reducing the number of the returns of Sony's headphone's due to poor app usage and user frustration.

Conclusion

Overall, I am happy with how this redesign turned out. As along time user of this app, I was excited to give it a redesign and give it some aspects of my own creativity in the design. By giving myself a timeline of 3 days to challenge myself to improve my decision making when it comes to design, I was able to learn more. Furthermore, allowing myself more time to develop a visually interesting design, I was able to push myself and create a project that I am even more pleased with. I am now more confident in my decision making and designing for accessibility needs. I look forward to developing the the UI for the iPad as that was a pain point I did not focus on in this project.