Dave Feroe Design
the job:
Dirty Rockstars
type: adult social community/networking, business network, dating
skills: user experience design, graphic design, web design & development | online: www.dirtyrockstars.com
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About the Project:
Created as a parallel brand to Kasidie, Dirty Rockstars is an edgier set of geo-targeted meet-up style groups within the national Kasidie community, complete with marketplace, custom swag and logowear.
I was able to take advantage of a wealth of existing user relationships and interactions, and approached the experience design of this site with an unprecedented demography. Interestingly, what we ultimately learned was that regardless of a thoughtful approach to an established market, if a product does not offer new experiences, it cannot succeed. Information is a tool, not magic.
Toolkit: wireframing, prototyping, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, PageSpinner, TextWrangler, HTML, CSS.
How do you pronounce "Kasidie"? In the beginning, this was the constantly recurring question. (The answer: just like "Cassidy")
Because of the doubts around our brand's power and this simple question, it was eventually (and unilaterally) decided that Kasidie should rebrand as Dirty Rockstars. So in the span of less than four days, I rebranded all existing site elements – creating new graphics, navigation, banners, backgrounds, fonts, branding, and scouring content. It was an exhausting marathon effort that ultimately went off without a hitch.
What followed was truly remarkable. Almost the entire subscriber base of Kasidie rose up en masse and demanded the return of the original branding. The site which no one could pronounce had become a badge of honor, and the name had become public code for the lifestyle itself... "Are you a friend of Kasidie?" Turns out that thousands of people were.
Needless to say, undoing the rebranding was much quicker thanks to archival procedures established before the switch, and the entire community was richer for the debacle. However, for me, this story remains a haunting reminder of what happens when decisions are made and implemented without adequate user opinion and interation. Score one for the users.