This project was a pure passion project. If there was any project that taught me the most lessons as well as one that I poored so much of myself into, LetsCypher was it.
What started off as an idea: What if I could create a website platform for dancers that helped document it's history but provided unique engagement features?
The initial concept that I came up with for Lets Cypher was one where I embedded YouTube videos into a webpage with buttons on each side (pertaining to each dancer,) allowing registered users an option to vote for who they thought won.
After some initial betas, a webapp was created but it lacked any long-lasting engagement. There wasn't a lot of returning value for visitors on the site. This concept alone was not enough to make a difference in the culture or drum up engagement.
As this project was showing me less interest from the community, I had friends in the choreography dance community expressing concerns about judging & the judging systems they currently used.
I did some initial research within the community to find out what systems were out, what they were looking for when judging, etc. I came up with a concept beta application which was tested at a live event running on a local network at the venue.
Here are some screenshots of the webapp beta and a video recording of it in action:
When I started my B-Boy Journey, I pulled inspiration from comic book characters and their moves. I tapped-in to this ideology for this concept on the B-Boy culture, but took the chance to try and align the elements.
I took a legendary figure from the B-boy element and from the MC element and highlighted comparisons in their art, contributions to the culture and character.
In the last phase of this project, I designed and curated unique content for the brand. As shown above, B-Boys As MCs was the start, but eventually I would branch off into more media offerings.
Some of the images below will show graphics for social media marketing of the unique content like: Podcasts, Live Reactions, Community Polling.
