Planning and Discovery

Introduction

It’s 2014. A few friends and I decided to get together in the city for spring break. The usual ensued…catching up, eating, a party here or there and of course talking music. We’ve always been the kind of group to alert each other at any given time if one of our favourite artists was releasing a new song or we wanted to share our playlists or discuss some new or past releases. Although we’ve had many blood boiled arguments, we’re all still friends!

At the end of the break, I had realized that we never really had a designated place for us to talk about music when we weren’t together. It was either one of our many group chats or an individual message from a friend saying something like “…you’d like this…” and my usual reply would be “…share this with the group…” Now I’m not dismissing my friends sentiment for thinking about me when they listen to specific music, but I wanted more than a link to a song. I wanted insight. I wanted to know what others thought about that particular single or album. Just because it might not be your taste, doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion on it…and one that I’d like to hear. Just like they say, you got to have an ear for both good and bad music because without the bad how do we know how good the good is!?

I decided to start a Facebook group titled “Music Shi*.” Anything music related was to be shared in the group. Any genre, song, album, mixtape, news, gossip, tours, original music…anything. The group was a success and we’ve all been able to expand our libraries and have insightful conversations about music. All in all, everybody enjoyed the group and it was a great way to keep in touch.

A few years go by and there is less and less activity in the group and the main reason being is that a lot of us had ditched Facebook. So thinking back to that wonderful spring break of 14’, I decided to go on yet another quest to envision a place for all of us to get back together online to discuss and discover music.

Incomes mish*…

Deriving from Music Shi*> Music ish > mish*. A mobile app that sets out to host a centralized space for friends to discuss, discover, and rank music.

Before getting into its design, I did some planning and discovery and eventually research. I have outlined my process below.

UX Questionnaire

The first task I set to out to complete was a user experience questionnaire. This is essentially a general list of questions I wanted to ask myself about the app to make sure I had at least some idea of what it would turn out to be. It also gave me an opportunity to identify any problems early on in the process. The questionnaire basically let me put my early vision of mish* on paper…without consequence. These are the questions I asked myself and I responded with some high-level answers.

GOALS
What are my intentions with the app? What do I want to accomplish with it?

USERS
Who are they? What type of person is the target user?

STRATEGY
What is the unique value proposition of the app?

TASKS
What can be done with the app? How will its design supplement this?

Research

Comparative Assessment  

I decided to start my research by exploring other products that were similar in nature to what I had in mind for mish*. This allowed me to gain insight into the expectations of my users based on the apps they frequently used. Some of the apps I looked at would not necessarily be my direct competitors, but rather apps that my target users are using to complete some of the same tasks I outlined in my questionnaire. I took a look at Reddit, KTT, Facebook, and Whatsapp and analyzed each product’s content, design, features, strengths, and weaknesses.

Surveys & User Research 

Next up was moving from product research to user research. I wanted to find out more about their needs, wants, and frustrations. I started by conducting a simple survey to get the gist of how people were currently discovering and discussing music. My sample group consisted of those who listen to music regularly at their own will.

Streaming services are the main way for users get new music. Integration of these services within the app seem a vital entry point for users to being exploring mish* and would encourage the use of the app. 

With 13 positive answers and 3 negative answers, there is definitely an opportunity present. 50% of the answers indicated a strong will to share and discuss new music with friends. 

One on hand, about 65% of the responses indicated that users either discuss music directly with a friend over an instant messaging service or over a public forum like a Reddit music based subreddit. On the other hand, and accounting for the remaining 35%, users do not use any app or website to discuss music with their friends or online.

This was a relief…But really it helped me realize that although there is a sample of people who do not discuss music via a product, there are those who would like to and those that do it in person that would like to do it virtually.

My next series of questions were more discussion based. Instead of listing the answers of everybody in my sample group (16), I have listed the questions I asked and followed it up with a summary and analysis of the answers they gave.

What are some of the irritations (if any) you have with discussing music on the platforms you selected? If you selected none, is there a reason?

The reasons for the 35% of users that did not use a product/service to discuss music include:

1. Not being able to find the right community (too many trolls, opinions steered by memes, not understanding the insight of an anonymous user)

2. Music is subjective and therefore even harder to discuss with people who don’t have open minds, if they discuss the music at all 

The pain points for the other 50% of users that discussed music on private or public modes of communication include: 

1. Difficult to share music if different people use different streaming services. Became a burden to do so

2. Links to music, and discussions of it, get lost in conversation with many group members

3. Love discussing music, but hate when they miss the action of the discussion. Need a notification system for album releases and/or when conversations pass a certain number of comments or likes/loves

This app sets out to host a centralized space for friends to discuss, discover, and rank music. What should the experience of an app like this feel like?

1. Users seek an aspect of entertainment embedded in the app. It should be delightful to use and interact with in addition to being a casual experience of exploring new music 

2. Along with being entertained, users seek to learn. The educational aspect of the app sparks curiosity. A balance between educational/constructive discussion and entertaining/trollery type discussion.

3. Users want the app to feel like a community. Establishing a private community structure where users are friends and have a rapport speaks to this.  

What would you want to get out of an app like this?

1. New knowledge about music 

2. Staying up-to-date with new music 

3. Safe space to discuss music

4. Unique perspectives and opinionated insights 

5. A place to share your love for music to others who are also passionate about it

6. Ability to expand music library and interest in music in general 

Are there any features you would like to see in this type of app?

1. Ability to listen to music directly on app (integration of streaming services) 

2. Top song/album of the week/month/year board 

3. Discussion boards 

4. Connect contacts 

5. Different user groups. Some users are keen on discussing while others on discovering (and potentially make the step to add insight). To weight reviews accordingly, users could be tagged on knowledge of music 

6. Within ranking system, distinguish overall album score and individual highlights of album as some users expressed different ways of approaching an album, whether back to front and therefore they rate for album cohesiveness or by choosing a few select standouts from the album. 

7. Interactive data 

8. Lyrics

9. Top songs by genre, artist, year, etc.

Proto-Personas

The user research I conducted helped me boil down what a typical user of the mish* app might look like. Based on the various needs, wants, and frustrations I gathered from my research, I decided to create 2 personas that I felt built a composite picture of my target user.

Design

Project Brief & Design Principles

To determine the right building blocks for the design of the project I summarized the initial objectives and the research conducted to gain high-level insight on what the product could potentially become.

When it comes to discussing and sharing music online, we can anticipate that people either use private modes of communication such as instant messaging or public virtual spaces such as social networks and public forums. With instant messaging, and more specifically with group chats where the number of members can exceed single digits, conversations can get cluttered and messages, decisions, and topics of conversation can be easily missed/dismissed. On the other hand, online public spaces like Reddit can offer a more structured flow with conversation threading, but with the drawback of moderatorship and large user bases making threads difficult to monitor. Other sites like 4chan and KTT can be disorganized (usually by design) and often feature “trolls” at the heart of the conversation.

The midpoint of these two virtual worlds seems to remain untapped. Therefore, mish* is a mobile application that should set out to host a centralized space for friends to discuss, discover, and rank music.

The overall approach can help provide solutions to the problems outlined by interviewees by tackling the root causes of the frustrations they had with discussing and discovering new music. I established a set of design principles that will become the foundation for providing solutions to problems faced by music discoverers and discussers. 

1. Centralizing Discussion - Bring music discussion out of the group chat and into a space where it can be organized by posts and insightfully critiqued by threaded comments

2. Safe Space - A private community structure unmoderated by 3rd parties

3. Discovery through Numbers - USP: provide a ranking system that allows users to rate albums and songs and visualize the data in a meaningful way (top rated albums of the year, etc.) which in turn allows users to discover new music

Sketches

I started the design process by means of sketching. With the findings from my research and with the design principles in mind, sketching would help me explore potential forms the product could eventually take. I sketched out some fundamental screens such as the main feed, post/comment view, album/artist view, ranking page, menu, search, notifications and user profile.

Wireframes

Next I moved onto creating wireframes based on the rough sketches. Here I laid out the basic skeleton of the app from splash screens to creating new posts. I made some changes from the sketches to support some fundamental design principles and to create a smoother flowing experience.

User Interface

Now it was time to build the wireframes into completed designs. You might notice some changes from the wireframes and this was partly due to some fundamental principles of design that impacted how the greyscale skeleton translated into a UI. Some of these principles included balancing text, images, buttons, icons, etc., creating harmony so visual elements relate and complement each other, and the role of colour to create consistency and to influence interaction by offering visual cues to the user as they navigate the app. I designed the app with the intention of pushing it to iOS.

Once logged in or signed up, you are directed to the home page. The home page can be navigated by scrolling the feed of a specific tab or by tapping one of the four fixed tabs (feed, discuss, albums, ranks) below the header. Swiping the screen will not navigate the tabs to not confuse the swiping gestures of liking, disliking, and replying to comments and posts. The header is in a fixed position as you scroll the feed, but the tabs minimize and re-appear when the user scrolls upwards. The logo on the header would remain for a few versions to create some brand recognition. Also on the header is a menu icon that reveals a side sheet menu, the logo, the group’s avatar that can be selected to change groups and a filter icon to filter content.

The feed is reminiscent of popular social media sites like Facebook (as mentioned earlier, the original inspiration came from Facebook groups) and Instagram where the feed is populated by user generated content and updated frequently.

The content itself ranges from postings about albums, songs, videos, links, and text based discussions. An occasional leaderboard of top albums is placed between content to maintain user engagement and to promote the discovery of new music.

Conclusion

Everyday I’m designing new screens and working with a developer to bring this idea from concept to product. I’m also redesigning screens and interactions as I continue to research and gain insight. I’m also currently working on user flows and building a prototype that I can use to test the app and refine it based on the results.

Thanks for reading!