The Record Room

A private cataloguing app for a two-thousand-record collection, built to be used while standing in front of the shelf.

Year: 2024
Location: Melville, Johannesburg
Duration: 6 weeks

Client: Private client
Role: Product design, PWA build, Data import
Discipline: App Development
Delivered: 2024 · 6 weeks

The problem

What we were actually solving

The client had 2 000 records, a spreadsheet last updated in 2021, and a specific problem: standing in a shop, unable to remember whether a pressing was already on the shelf at home. Every existing app wanted a subscription and a social network.

The approach

Warm room with a tree, pendant lighting and a desk

How the work was made

It is a progressive web app, not a store app, because the whole point was that it should open instantly from a home-screen icon and work in a basement record shop with no signal. The full catalogue is cached locally; sync happens when it can.

Import ran off the existing spreadsheet plus the Discogs API, which filled in artwork, pressing details and catalogue numbers for about 80 per cent of the collection automatically. The remaining 400 were photographed and matched by hand.

Search was the entire design problem. One field, results in under 50 milliseconds against the local cache, and a barcode scanner as a fallback for the sleeves where the client cannot remember the title.

The outcome

The collection is accurate for the first time since 2021, and the client has stopped buying duplicates.

Records catalogued and searchable offline: 2 000Records catalogued and searchable offline
Search response against the local cache: <50msSearch response against the local cache
Of records enriched automatically from Discogs: 80%Of records enriched automatically from Discogs
Monthly subscription, by design: R0Monthly subscription, by design