Ochre & Soul is a 2D mobile colouring app. Users select numbered colours from a palette, tap matching numbered areas on an artwork, and fill the picture region by region. The product distinguishes itself through the work it celebrates and the calm, polished way it is delivered.

2.1 — Interaction lineage

Ochre & Soul sits in the lineage of Happy Color — same core loop of tap-a-region, fill-a-cell, watch-the-picture-emerge — and deliberately rejects the visual loudness, advertising density, and reward-loop pacing that the broader free-to-play colouring category has drifted toward. The point of reference matters at kickoff: when a design decision could plausibly belong in a casual game or in a colouring book, the colouring book wins. Additional reference apps for editorial tone, onboarding restraint, and purchase presentation are tracked alongside the brief (see Section 20 — Open Decisions).

2.2 — Editorial focus

The library is built around positive, culturally specific depictions of Black life. Editorial intent and the personalisation schema in §9.7 are two views of the same content strategy — intent is the editorial brief to commissioners and reviewers; the schema is what the app actually ranks and filters by.

Editorial intent (brief to commissioners and the cultural review board)

• Black culture, identity, and representation across the diaspora
• African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latin, and global Black communities
• Positive depictions of Black women, families, and children
• Celebrations, hairstyles, textiles, traditions, and cultural symbols
• Child-friendly content with respectful cultural context — artist bios and credit appear on every artwork detail screen (see §14.1 and §14.3)
• Visually rich without being chaotic

Active library taxonomy (drives ranking and the “chosen for you” row)

The cultural-themes multi-select in onboarding (§9.7) uses exactly eight values. Editorial intent above must be expressible through these values — if a commissioned artwork does not fit cleanly into one or more of them, that is a tagging gap to fix before publication, not a product question to reopen.

textiles      // Kente, mudcloth, Adinkra, Ankara
carnival      // Caribbean carnival, costumes, dance
portraits     // Faces, hair, beauty
family        // Multi-generational, daily life
children      // Child-friendly characters and stories
symbols       // Cultural symbols and iconography
traditions    // Weddings, ceremonies, celebrations
landscapes    // Places, architecture, markets

2.3 — Audience segments

The product is built for four overlapping audiences. Each segment shapes a specific delivery requirement — these are not marketing personas, they are concrete constraints on what ships at MVP.

Segment	Need	Implication for delivery
Adults seeking calm creative downtime	A relaxing, polished colouring experience that feels culturally resonant rather than generic.	Onboarding must reach the first satisfying fill quickly; the interface must stay elegant and non-game-like.
Parents and carers choosing content for children	Safe, positive, child-friendly depictions of Black life with low-friction offline use.	Child-mode default via the audience flag; cultural review as a publish gate; offline play after one download.
Children using the app directly or jointly	Simple guidance, accessible colouring interactions, and trustworthy content.	First artwork playable anonymously; tooltips kept light; behavioural analytics restricted in child mode (§13.3); platform parental controls for IAP.
Users with colour-vision or other accessibility needs	A colouring experience that does not rely on colour discrimination alone.	Always-show-numbers default, optional pattern fills, screen-reader semantics, reduce-motion support, and forgiving tap behaviour are baseline canvas features (§12).

2.4 — Product promises

These are the four commitments the product makes to the user. They are the only positioning claims §02 considers durable; anything else is editorial colour.

• Anonymous-first. Every install holds a persistent anonymous session from first launch (§7.8, §9.1). Browsing, downloading free artworks, colouring, and saving local progress all work without sign-up. Account creation is offered only after the user has experienced the aha moment, never before.
• Offline-first. Once an artwork is downloaded, colouring must remain fully playable without a network connection (§22 principle 2). No interactive surface during play may depend on a network round-trip.
• Accessible by design. Accessibility lives inside the colouring engine, not on a settings page. Numbers, contrast, pattern fills, and forgiving tap behaviour are core canvas features (§12) — not deferrable to post-launch polish.
• Packs not subscriptions at launch. Free starter artworks plus one-off premium content packs are the only paid surface at MVP. Subscription is explicitly deferred post-MVP (see §4.7, §19, OD-02 in §20). The client never decides entitlement — receipts are validated server-side via Apple ASSN and Google Play Developer API.

2.5 — Tone of voice

Polished. Joyful. Accessible. Calm. Not overly game-like. The product should feel closer to a beautifully designed colouring book on a screen than to a free-to-play mobile game. Interface motion is gentle, copy is warm and confident, and ornament is restrained.

Tone-of-voice is a publish gate for in-app copy in the same way cultural review is a publish gate for artwork. The brief copy guide below is the source of truth until a fuller voice guide is established under Brand & Design.

Voice attributes (in priority order)

1. Warm. Speak to the reader, not at them. Second person, contractions, present tense.
2. Confident. Short sentences. State the value, then stop. Never qualify with “we hope,” “we think,” “you can try to.”
3. Calm. No urgency, no scarcity, no countdowns. The product does not chase the user.
4. Specific. Name the cultural theme, the artist, the moment — not “amazing artwork” or “premium content.”
5. Respectful. Cultural references are honoured, not flattened into marketing copy.

Banned words and phrases

Avoid in all in-app and store copy, including push notifications and onboarding:

• “Unlock,” “unleash,” “level up,” “power up,” “boost,” “supercharge”
• “Premium experience,” “premium content” as a noun phrase to the user — use the named pack instead (“Carnival Queens”, “Adinkra Symbols”)
• “Limited time,” “hurry,” “don’t miss,” “ends soon,” “last chance”
• “Addictive,” “can’t put it down,” “binge”
• “Awesome,” “amazing,” “incredible,” “epic,” “ultimate”
• “Token,” “diverse,” “inclusive” used as a category label — the work speaks for itself; let the artwork detail and the artist bio do the cultural work

Voice in practice

Surface	Don’t	Do
Onboarding welcome	”Unlock hundreds of premium colouring artworks!"	"An artwork at a time. Start with one chosen for you.”
Library empty state	”No artworks yet — go download one!"	"Browse the library to pick your first.”
Paywall headline	”Unlock the Carnival Queens premium pack"	"The Carnival Queens pack — eight portraits from across the Caribbean.”
Push notification	”🔥 New artworks just dropped!"	"Three new portraits added to your Traditions library.”
Error toast	”Oops! Something went wrong."	"Couldn’t reach the library. We’ll try again when you’re back online.”
Sign-up prompt	”Sign up now to save your progress forever!"	"Keep your library across devices? You can do this later in Settings.”

Banned UI conventions

The tone is reinforced — or undone — by interaction patterns as much as words.

• No countdown timers on paywalls, push notifications, or featured rows.
• No streak mechanics, badges, or daily-reward dialogs. The retention checklist in §9.7 is the only persistent return-path surface.
• No “rate this app” prompts during a colouring session. Offer only after a completion, dismissible, not repeated within 30 days.
• No interstitial ads of any kind at launch (§4.7, §14.4). An ad-supported tier remains open as OD-01 and is not in MVP scope.