To gain a better understanding of our target audience, we interviewed several musicians and active listeners. These interviews taught us about the frustrations, motivations, and goals of our target users.
Key findings uncovered:
Finding new and unique bands that I can share with my friends is important to me
Based on what our users preferred, we did some analysis on the current state of popular music streaming services and social media. Taking especially close looks at Spotify, Instagram, and Bandcamp. We identified areas where TUKA differentiates itself from the rest, such as hiding social metrics (likes/dislikes) as well as what these sites do well to emphasize discoverability.
To synthesize the data from our user interviews and identify key trends that existed, we created an affinity map
We grouped our findings into categories to shape our understanding:
This To help understand the needs and goals of our users, we synthesized our data and created a persona. This helped form our decisions to better determine content priority based on specific needs and goals.
After determining who our persona is, we began synthesizing our research to help us determine which features we would add for this phase of the project.
Below is our feature prioritization chart. The right are features with the highest business value, and most critical for the MVP.
Samantha loves listening to music, but has a difficult time discovering new artists, showcasing her taste, and connecting with friends. She has to bounce between Spotify, Instagram, and text message, which can be time consuming and tedious.
How might we help her discover new music, curate content, and connect with friends utilizing one app?
Most of our design is derived off of the home screen, so we spent a majority of our effort getting the feel right and testing elements of it before moving on to the pages accessed from it.
Designing for web first (per clients request) - some features include a carousel of featured songs that automatically plays, lists of other artists and songs that people similar to you (your taste) are currently listening to, and bands you're following in the main portion of the page.
For mobile, we created a wireflow so interactions from screen to screen are easier to follow.
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First is the homepage, mobile and web with a autoplay carousel at the top and curated feed below.
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We then created an artist page, with multi-view for songs, tour and information about the artist. A bonus for this view is a realtime view of what your friends are currently listening to (left side)
The same concept on mobile is achieved by scrolling
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Since our users value curation, it's also important for them to be able to favorite a single song - this is achieved by pushing the heart icon.
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An additional concept we played around with, is a stories feature when a user is taking a deeper dive into listening to a band. This enables the artist and fan to connect within the platform, rather than jumping over to a different social network while listening.
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It was great to build out a responsive site, so that our users could have the option to discover and listen to new artists on their choice of platform. In taking this a step further, I would next ideate on how sharing, curating playlists, and messaging individual users would look. Our users love sharing music that they love with friends, and finding songs for their friends.
I create thoughtful designs founded on user-centered research
