Quinn
Mainstreaming gender-inclusive audio erotica
Background
Quinn isn’t your grandmother’s radio drama, but it isn’t your ordinary, tailored-to-men adult content either. Caroline Spiegel founded the subscription-based erotic audio platform in 2019 after realizing the internet’s visual offerings were unsatisfying and devoid of female perspectives. While audio erotica isn’t new, Quinn’s intention is to provide and expand access to gender-inclusive sexual experiences.
Overview
In 2021, Quinn teamed up with Big Human for a full-scale revamp that better represented the company’s personality and better served its intended audience. It started with updating the brand’s look and feel to underscore its personality and ethos. We then optimized the platform’s UI/UX on desktop and mobile, accounting for its vast library of creator content, newly implemented subscription-based business model, and dynamic online community.
Big Human’s three-year partnership with Quinn continues with routine upkeep, further brand iterations, strategic UI/UX updates, and ad-hoc requests.
- Strategy
- Branding
- Product Design
- App Development
- Web Development
- Content
Branding
Infusing depth with pops of color and minimalist visuals
Quinn’s brand makeover needed to bring weight to its feisty yet elevated spirit — something we channeled through color. The new color palette leads with an eye-catching strawberry-red that’s purposefully applied to buttons, CTAs, and small UI elements to help Quinn tactfully take ownership of its brand. Quinn’s secondary palette adds dimension with a rainbow of brilliant shades and pastel tones, used in gradients as another branded element throughout the app and website.
Visuals are naturally minimal on an audio-first platform, so we complemented the gradients with a clean white background, straightforward icons, and subtle visual cues, including a soundwave detail on the audio player. To let the content steer the experience, we emphasized sleek Swiss typography, a now-established identifier of the Quinn brand. The finished look is like eye candy, giving users a taste of what they’ll find on the platform.
Product Design
Restructuring the framework for desktop and mobile
The Big Human team reorganized Quinn’s sitemap and information architecture for better navigation and a seamless user experience, creating a new visual hierarchy on the homepage with easy-to-explore sections and using clear labels in the top navigation to make high-traffic items easier to find. We also applied Quinn’s branded gradients to its content tags and filters to bring attention to its most popular categories. Quinn’s About page was rescaled to include Frequently Asked Questions and sections for recent news, blog posts, and other highlighted content.
To showcase the best of its offerings (and attract new subscribers), we created an embed feature for the platform’s blog, a hub for sex education and wellness, that allows Quinn to promote related audios and playlists on the landing page and independent posts.
Product Design
Creating a safe, open environment
To establish a safe, nonjudgmental space, the overall user experience is built around self-rule and consent, with listeners at liberty to explore what they like and screen what they don’t. Secondary to Quinn’s main content categories are niche bracket tags that appear in the audio details, giving users more context into what they can expect to hear. Self-generated usernames help preserve anonymity, but listeners can hint at their personalities by customizing profile images with emojis and Quinn’s branded colors.
Product Design
Connecting users to a larger online community
Immersive audio erotica is primarily a solitary experience, but Quinn has several avenues for users to connect with Creators and each other beyond leaving and liking comments. The platform curates playlists based on popular topics and themes, but users can also create their own, which can be private or public. Trending public, user-generated playlists are featured on the Quinn homepage, and any Creators that listeners follow are shown on their individual profiles, free for others to discover.
The audio erotica community is just as active on Instagram as it is on the platform itself, so Big Human’s content team brainstormed social campaigns to spotlight Quinn’s latest updates and present its legacy content in new ways while our designers templated assets to extend Quinn’s brand to its socials. A standout was Quinn 2023 Wrapped, a shareable summary of users’ listening habits throughout the year.
Development
Optimizing the listening experience
To ensure content streams without interruptions or delays, we built Quinn an entirely new react-native media player that supports all file types and performs at the same caliber as other streaming platforms. Most users close their eyes after choosing a track, so audios are engineered for continuous playback even while devices are locked. The new audio player is also synced across users’ devices and connected to their personal libraries, allowing them to bookmark their favorite Creators and Categories as well as queue, like, download, and share tracks. The soundwave detail we created doubles as a progress tracker and experience meter, showing users the intensity of audios throughout different points.
Results
Evolving with the brand
Quinn’s most recent rebirth better reflects who it is and whom it’s for. For existing users, the website and mobile app enhance everything they originally loved; for newcomers, it’s a prelude to their climax, introducing them to a more open and inclusive sexual wellness experience.
In September 2021, Quinn clocked 740K user sessions a month and rounded out the Top 5 Health & Fitness apps after a year in the App Store. Big Human continues to work with the erotic audio platform on the natural evolution of its brand, regular UX/UI improvements, and new features designed to bring the Quinn community closer together.
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