Case study · Data storytelling prototype

Siren makes market history felt.

An atmospheric web prototype that pairs notable moments in Bitcoin history with music, price context, and a scrub-able timeline. The product question: can data become a daily ritual instead of a dashboard?

STATUSInteractive static prototype · live direction
ROLEProduct thesis, data story, UI system, prototype
STACKReact · Babel · Supabase · Data viz · Web Audio
SIREN // DAILY2010.05.22
EVENT · BITCOIN PIZZA DAY

10,000 BTC, two pizzas

Paired with: Money / Pink noise edit

01Genesis — Ambient I2009
02Pizza Day — Money2010
03Mt. Gox — Static2014
Problem

Market data explains what happened. It rarely explains how it felt.

Bitcoin history is usually presented as a chart, a price table, or a dense timeline of events. Those formats are useful, but they flatten the emotional texture of each era: mania, disbelief, collapse, recovery, myth-making, and return.

Call of the Siren explores a more ritualized format. Each notable day becomes a daily drop: a track, an event, price context, and a timeline moment that lets the user feel the market narrative instead of only reading it.

PRODUCT LOOP

A daily ritual, not a terminal.

The product loop is intentionally editorial: one moment at a time, with enough context to invite exploration and enough mystery to make tomorrow worth opening.

01

Drop

A daily historical moment appears with a track pairing, date, and market-era context.

02

Listen

Music gives the event an emotional lens before the user dives into the numbers.

03

Scrub

The timeline lets users move through events, price shifts, and symbolic markers.

04

Archive

Moments become collectible entries in a broader history, playlist, and narrative system.

Process

Editorial product thinking over raw chart density.

THESIS

Pair data with mood

The product starts from a thesis that markets and music both carry emotional memory over time.

STRUCTURE

Turn history into moments

Events are scoped into readable daily entries instead of a sprawling encyclopedia.

INTERACTION

Make exploration tactile

Waveforms, timeline markers, event rows, and playback states make the prototype feel alive.

Current Build

  • Static React/Babel prototype with a complete atmospheric console direction.
  • Daily moment model combining event context, music pairing, and timeline placement.
  • Interactive waveform, playback state, scrubber, event glyphs, and playlist rows.
  • Visual system tuned for Bitcoin history without looking like a trading dashboard.

Next Bets

  • Deeper price and on-chain data overlays for each moment.
  • Curated playlists by era: genesis, mania, crash, recovery, institutionalization.
  • Collector layer for daily editions, rarity tiers, and historical moments.
  • Whitepaper and archive structure that make the product thesis legible.
What I learned

Data products need a point of view.

The hardest part was not making a timeline. It was deciding what the timeline should make someone feel. Without a point of view, the product becomes another data surface. With one, it becomes a ritual.

Siren pushed me toward stronger data storytelling instincts: choose the moment, reduce the noise, create a sensory frame, then give users enough agency to explore.

Next: deepen the archive.

The next milestone is a richer historical archive with real data overlays, stronger daily curation, and a clear collector layer for moments.

Contact Kevin