Studio sound. Phone simple.
A CASE STUDY
Role
Principal Product Designer
Company
Pirate Studios
Impact
40% Revenue in CAPTURE sites
Increased UGC Volume
Increased Booking Frequency
Increased Retention
Strengthened Brand Equity
Team
Loz H – PM
Daniel K – HWE
Rebecca A – SWE
Julia L – SWE
Exec Summary
Capture is a frictionless, phone-first recording experience. I led the project from concept through launch at Pirate Studios, increasing revenue in capture sites by 40%, boosting retention, and redefining studio experiences — all without new hardware or extra costs.
Context
Post-COVID, gigs became scarce, and artists increasingly relied on social media to connect directly with audiences.
But creating quality content required expensive gear, technical know-how, and valuable studio time — things many artists didn't have or want to manage.
Pirate Studios faced its own challenges. Lockdowns led to illegal raves, safety issues, and reputational damage.
As revenue dropped, prices increased, alienating customers who valued affordability. Pirate urgently needed a differentiator — something uniquely theirs — to rebuild their brand, boost bookings, reclaim customer trust, and visibly align with artists.
The Problem
Capture the moment, leave with something to share.
The company had tried a webcam pilot.
Poor audio meant un-shareable clips.
Grainy footage meant low engagement.
Outdated hardware became obsolete within months.
Unsurprisingly, it flopped.
But the instinct was right.
The need was real.
There was an opportunity to design a solution that felt magical, but required nothing of the user. No setup, no tech literacy, no cost.
And above all, nothing bolted to the ceiling that would be expensive to scale, easy to vandalise, or obsolete within a year.
So I proposed a new approach.
What if we built the entire experience around the phone in your pocket?
Let the user bring the camera.
Let us handle the rest.
We can rebuild the value of a studio session without changing the room.
A seamless system that turns a studio session into shareable, studio-quality A/V.
No extra steps.
No new gear.
No trade-off in quality.
Business Challenges
No native app
We built the first version as a web app to quickly iterate, play to the teams strength and balance the budget.
Virtually zero hardware investment
Rollout had to be cheap, vandal-proof, low-maintenance and scalable across 700+ studios.
Multiple studio generations
We designed for various studio types, acoustics, lighting conditions, and layouts.
Users under pressure
Every second setting up is a second not creating. Capture had to be entirely frictionless.
Discovery & Insights
I embedded myself in the user flow.
Hanging out in studios, interviewing DJs, observing behaviours between sets.
I spoke to customers recording themselves, trawled social media to see what they shared, and even brought in my own gear to replicate their pain.
Four things became clear:
1
Most users just placed their phone by the decks and hit record — no mic, no sync, no edits.
2
Nobody checked the phone once it was recording. "Set and forget" wasn’t a preference — it was the only way.
3
No playback during sessions — only confirmation that recording worked.
4
Time pressure was real. Every touchpoint had to justify its existence.
These insights became the core ethos of the product.
Instant familiarity
No configuration
Bulletproof recording
The Breakthrough Idea
A showcase of the original audio only experience
Instead of upgrading 700 studios with cameras that would age fast and break easily, we let customers bring their own optics — devices they already knew how to use.
Designing the Experience
Designing Capture was about creating a seamless digital layer for a physical environment.
Every decision had to consider how the product felt in the room — its lighting, acoustics, vibe, even tempo.
A UI for 4ft away
The interface had to work at arm’s length--literally. I designed it assuming phones would sit beside decks, not in hand.
That meant glanceable visual language, high contrast in low-light, and zero reliance on sound.
Handling real-world edge cases
To be edge-case proof we had to think beyond the screen.
Calls?
Capture keeps rolling.
Storage low?
We warn you up front and show exactly how many minutes you have left.
Zero surprises, zero lost takes.
Ambient by design, loud when needed
Artists hated distractions — so I matched Capture’s dark UI to the studio’s low-light calm.
But this created an opportunity.
When something critical happened, I used bright, pulsing visuals to instantly break through.
Quietly respectful, but always ready to shout when it mattered.
Getting reliable data
Discovery and feedback was a continuous process. We built with our customers.
Regular interviews, sit-in sessions and feedback mechanisms integrated into the journey from day 1.
We made sure we were capturing quantitative and qualitative feedback at key points in the journey through every version.
Onboarding removed by design
Every onboarding flow we tested, we eventually deleted.
If you needed to read it, the UI had failed.
Capture had to be instantly usable — with no explanation.
Eventually, it was.
From web to native, audio to video
Once adoption rose, we built the native app and added video.
Still phone-based. Still seamless.
On-device processing let users leave with synced A/V immediately.
Capture could now seamlessly record audio and video — fulfilling its original vision and getting a brand evolution to reflect it.
Iterating to Invisible
Each iteration simplified and refined the experience, moving us closer to true invisibility and maximum utility.
The brief wasn't to make something slick — it was to make something…
A closer look at v6
Leading beyond the screen
Outcomes
“I didn’t even have to think about it.
Just recorded, played, and walked away with the perfect mix.”
Arguably bigger than those stats, internally, it signalled a new product posture:
Put the artist experience first, and the numbers follow.
Sounds simple, but in the heat of daily firefights at a startup transitioning to a scale-up it takes real intention and courage.
It takes a deep view across the business, broad stakeholder alignment, a genuine desire to see the business to better and critically to build something that will really improve the lives of others.
Reflection
This project taught me what it means to design for presence, not interaction.
It also taught me how to roll out ambitious, hardware-integrated products without the luxury of a big budget or a big team.
It deepened my sensitivity to digital products that live in real, physical space.
It made me think like an architect as well as a product designer — considering lighting, posture, signal loss, flow, the entire spatial rhythm of interaction.
Social by default
DJs don’t play alone. They bring friends — and those friends bring phones.
I designed a frictionless feature: scan your friends QR code, instantly join the session. Multiple angles, synced audio, zero hassle.
And it wasn't just about content. Every friend who scanned became a new Pirate user, boosting leads and future bookings.