Muse is a canvas for inspired & focused thinking. I was a designer & storyteller at Muse 2022-2023 and had the opportunity to work on the messaging, website, and simplified user’s handbook for the 3.0 launch. The project lasted just over 2 months. I worked closely with our lead product designer and lead storyteller with input from the rest of the team.
Deliverables
- Messaging
- Content for landing page
- Simplified users’ handbook
- Assets for Product Hunt
New era
The team, originally a group of seven, was transitioning to an independent, one-person operation. The goal of the 3.0 launch was to communicate this shift and reposition Muse for individual use after several months of experimenting with a team-centric model. The main challenge for storytelling was to update and simplify the website and other content to make it straightforward for one person to update in the future.
For thinking
Our approach was to review Muse’s history, distill what had worked, and blend it with new materials from the teams phase. The messaging was inspired by the language of our users. Feedback messages, reviews, and survey results have shown us that Muse’s role in users’ workflows is most commonly described as ‘thinking’ or ‘figuring things out’—a reflection of Muse’s early messaging strategies.
Calm, focused, and inspiring
Muse’s brand was built around a tone of calm, focus, and thoughtfulness. Originally designed for the messy middle of the creative process—where ideas accumulate and need to be made sense of—we aimed to evolve the calm tone by weaving in the freeformness and expressiveness of the product.
In Muse’s case, expressiveness isn’t about bold colors, endless styling options, or a flashy interface. Expressing your ideas in Muse means bringing multimedia content together on one canvas and remixing it freely with your own notes and scribbles—typed or handwritten. It means working with loose thoughts and ideas without getting bogged down by presentation and styling options, which are less important during the early stages of ideation.
As we crafted the new messaging and redesigned the website, our goal was to maintain the thoughtful foundation while emphasizing the inspired feeling you get when you’re doing focused thinking. Muse’s aim is to create an environment where working with your ideas feels intuitive and open-ended, ultimately helping you gain clarity on what matters most.
