Role(s)
UX/UI Designer, UX Architect
Timeline
Three weeks
Tools
Figma, Miro, GSuite, Zoom, Trello
Team
Blu Bunton, Magdalena Lachowicz, Nicole Weatherly, Naomy Hernandez, Nik Worthen
The Problem
Music listeners have a difficult time accessing local music and smaller artists. Musicians have a difficult time reaching their audiences and have to juggle multiple platforms to do so.
The Solution
Mixtape is an app geared towards both listeners and musicians alike. Listeners have the ability to stream music from local musicians and even listen to artists around the world! They can see where their favorite bands are playing and are able to support them through direct donations.
Musicians are able to use Mixtape as their one-stop shop for uploading music, managing shows and announcing them to their followers, as well as collaborate with other musicians. The focus of the app also allows for local musicians to stand out more and not have to fight against algorithms that favor more popular acts. Direct donations will allow for musicians to raise money without worrying about venues taking a cut or paper thin margins that come with merch.
Duties
I conducted exploratory user interviews and desk research, collaborated on research synthesis and user persona, conducted competitive analyses, created lo-fi and mid-fi wireframes, created prototypes for each stage of design(lo-fi, mid-fi, and high-fi) conducted user testing and made iterations based on findings.
User Research
Proto-Personas
Our app was meant to serve two different types of users – listeners and musicians. Therefore, we proceeded with creating two proto personas to reflect both of them.
Max, a listener, would be our template for those users; Sam would be the template for musicians. This dual path allowed us to keep the needs of these users separate to prevent confusion and to cater to their particular needs, which would be considerably different.
Interview Plan
We conducted 5 interviews with two types of potential users – two music listeners and three musicians. The questions focused on the struggles of listeners to access local music and the barriers musicians face with music and show promoting, as well as generating funds. Musicians had an additional set of question that focused on their experiences, where a listener wouldn’t have insight.
We wanted to understand both sides of the equation, especially given the dual nature of the app we were hoping to create. Listeners were used to music streaming apps, so we wanted to know their thoughts on what they needed to do in order to listen to local music and independent artists.
As well, we wanted to understand the struggles that musicians face with making music today. How did they navigate promoting themselves and their content? What sort of apps were they using to do so? Our focus was on how they feel about the state of being an independent musician in a digital age.
Feel that popular apps cater to well known musicians
Think that local music is difficult to access on music streaming apps
Would like the option to donate directly to local musicians
Survey
We also conducted a short survey which focused on listeners and their experience with music streaming apps and their relationship to local music.
We found that the majority of those surveyed were wanting for a better way to access local music and would want easier ways of directly supporting the independent musicians they love.
Affinity Diagram
The responses were sorted into themed groups which allowed us to better understand our users’ gains, pain points, wants, and current tools. We found that listeners experienced similar pain points for accessing local music and that they would like to be better able to support those musicians. Musicians were most often frustrated with how hard it is to stand out in an oversaturated music market and that they had to juggle multiple apps to balance uploading music, promoting their content and shows, and trying to build a community of musicians.
Notes from the interviews were condensed into general ideas of what potential listener and musician users would be thinking, feeling, hearing, saying, doing, and seeing. This expanded into their pain points and potential gains. These were used to better inform the motivations behind potential users of our app and what they would seek out of it.
User Insight - Listeners
Through user interviews, we found that listeners considered music integral to their everyday life; each one used a music streaming app daily. They often do what they can to support local musicians, such as attending shows, buying merch, and listening to their music. They also felt that having a way to directly donate to a band would be beneficial to their ability to support local musicians. Overall, they feel it’s important to support local music and that it expands their horizons, inspires them, provides entertainment, and a social outlet.
Listeners seem eager to find new ways to support local musicians but often come across a variety of barriers. They often feel that major streaming apps favor popular musicians and have to use a variety of apps to stream, discover new music, and find shows to attend. They feel that it is more difficult to find the music of local bands and that the effort to do so holds them back from trying. This difficulty also extends to finding and attending shows, though some of those barriers are self-inflicted (such as not wanting to leave the house). They would like to see live streams of local shows to help with this.
Overall, we feel that listeners highly value local music and would like to have easier access to their music and shows. They feel it is important to support them and would like to have an easier way to do so. Their biggest concern is a lack of access and having to dig through multiple apps for the music and shows they are looking for.
User Insight - Musicians
Our interviews with musicians shed light on how much they value their listeners and fellow musicians. They feel that reaching their audience is extremely important and want to find good avenues to do so. They like to have a sense of community with other musicians, from whom they seek inspiration, mentorship, and collaboration. As well, they want to be accessible to their audience and be able to maintain visibility of their music and content online.
Musicians are often frustrated by how difficult it is to be a smaller musician in the digital age. They have to fight algorithms to stay relevant in an oversaturated market due to music streaming apps and how easy it is to make music now. As a result, it is difficult to stand out in order to grow their audience. They also feel that promoting shows can be a hassle since each platform has its own barriers and having to use multiple apps creates a lot of leg work for little return. Oftentimes, they feel these platforms are incredibly outdated or cater to more popular musicians. As well, many of these avenues require money, which strains their already tight budgets. They want to have a more streamlined process to encapsulate music streaming, show promotion, a community of musicians, and the ability to generate funds.
Overall, we feel that musicians highly value the music they create and their audience, no matter how small. However, they often feel lost in an oversaturated market that caters towards popular artists and frustrates them due to the shortcomings of the platforms that are available. Tight budgets are a huge concern as it limits how much they can achieve. Many also seek a way to build community amongst fellow musicians, for mentorship and inspiration alike. Their biggest concern is the limitations surrounding staying relevant and visible to their audiences when the deck is stacked against them.
User Persona - Max
Max is our potential listener. He’s a teacher from Austin, TX who is nostalgic for the days of music blogs and house shows.
He wants to listen to more local music and independent artists but finds himself lost in an oversaturated market that caters more to popular acts.
As well, he’d like to have a more direct impact on funding bands – he buys merch and attends shows but knows that a cut is always taken so there’s less money getting to the musician as a result.
User Persona - Sam
Sam is our potential musician. She’s a grad student from Austin, TX who is also the frontwoman of the band The Dream Teams.
She wants to better connect to her fans and to grow her audience. She’s frustrated with the algorithms of popular music streaming apps and has to use multiple apps to manage everything.
She’s also hurting for funds and venues take a huge cut out of her gig profits.
Defining the Problem
Listeners
UX Hypothesis
If users of Mixtape immediately feel it takes too much effort to access local music, find shows, and support musicians, then they are unlikely to continue using the app and revert back to more popular services.
Problem Statement
Listeners are often overwhelmed by the amount of effort it takes to access local music, find shows in their area, and support musicians. This is a problem because the user should feel that the app is a one-stop shop for accessing local music ; therefore, they are far less likely to continue using the app and supporting these musicians. This becomes a larger problem as user’s frustrations grow, they are also unlikely to recommend the app to their peers and even pass it along to any musicians they know, which would be detrimental to the conversion rate of our app.
Value Propsition
Our mobile app aims to alleviate the pain points of our listeners by providing them with a powerful tool to effortlessly connect with local musicians they’re interested in. With features such as donation capabilities, seamless exploration, and live streaming, our app puts the entire experience at their fingertips.
Musicians
UX Hypothesis
If musicians feel over encumbered by the functionality of the app instead of feeling that it streamlines the process, then they are unlikely to continue using the app and will have to resort back to the struggle of juggling multiple resources to accomplish what Mixtape seeks to provide.
Problem Statement
Musicians are struggling to juggle every aspect of the platform and feel that it is cumbersome to use as a result. This is a problem because the musician should feel the app is streamlining the process of what they used to need multiple apps and websites for; therefore, they’re likely to not continue to use the app and wouldn’t recommend it to fellow musicians that would benefit from such a service. This becomes a larger problem as musicians leave the platform, then user retention also goes down due to a lack of content for them to access.
Value Proposition
Our mobile app offers musicians a ‘pocket manager’ tool to address their pain points. With features such as show promotion, seamless collaboration with other musicians, and live streaming capabilities, our app empowers musicians to take control of their career.
Ideation
Competitor Analysis
A competitor analysis was completed in order to better understand what options listeners and musicians have for accessing independent music.
The general consensus we made was that no app provided an all-in-one platform for musician’s content and some were outdated and were losing users.
Sound Cloud
Known as the largest audio discovery platform.
Reverbnation
Website focused on the independent music industry.
Drooble
Website dedicated to creating a community of musicians worldwide.
Bandsintown
Concert discovery and promotion platform.
Bandcamp
Online record store and music community.
Audiomack
Free music sharing and discovery platform.
Feature Prioritization
An ideation session was conducted to generate potential features for both the listener and musician sides of the app. We utilized the “I like, I want, What if” method, using sticky notes to capture ideas. We then voted on the features that we deemed most relevant in addressing the problems we aimed to solve.
Listener
The winning ideas were placed into a Feature Prioritization matrix to weight their feasibility and importance. We felt that our ideas were all very feasible but varied in importance due to how they fit into our app.
Musician
We found that the ideas we prioritized were incredibly important but were more difficult to implement into the app. It would take some extra work on this side of the app to fulfill the wants and needs of potential musician users.
Feature Showcase
Welcome to Mixtape! An app built for independent musicians and their listeners, dedicated to keeping it local.
As we decided on the variety of features for Mixtape, we highlighted those on the right as key to presenting the app to potential users.
Exploration
Users can search for music by location or genre.
Show
Promotion
Artists can announce shows and promote them to their audience.
Donating
Direct donations to artists circumvent fees that cut into profits.
Music
Collaboration
Request a fill-in or reach out to a band you’d like to play a show with.
Personalization
Mixtape will use its algorithm to build custom playlists for users.
Live
Streaming
Stream shows, album releases, and more.
Story Board - Listener
1. Max is passionate about local bands
Max is a school teacher in Austin, Texas who is also a huge music lover. He is very passionate and supportive towards local bands with in his area and would attend shows in his free time. His goal is to discover new local artists with in his area to support and listen to.
2. Max is overwhelmed by all the apps he uses
Max currently uses a whole bunch of apps to find local artists but gets overwhelmed and frustrated having to put in so much time to sit and research through the oversaturation of band and musicians in his area.
3. Max discovers
Mixtape
Max doesn’t have a lot of time to spare as a teacher as he spend most of his time preparing for classes or grading. He goes out of his way to find an app that will help him find local musicians in his area as well as allow him to stream their music al in the one app. He stubbles upon the Mixtape app.
4. Max investigates Mixtape's features
Max is delighted at how the filtering system functions and how easy and fast it is for him to discover musicians by location radius, music genre, and popularity. He sees that you can support the artists by streaming their music as well as make donations directly to the musician/ band.
5. He likes what he see's and signs up
Max begins the onboarding process by signing up for a listener account. Inputs his likes and preferred music genres as well as location to have the app better filter his discovery home page. With the app he loves how there are announcements directly from artists about any shows happening near him.
6. Max enjoys using Mixtape
Over the next few weeks, Max has never stopped using Mixtape and loves everything it has to offer. He loves how he frequently gets notified when artists are having shows. He listens to his favorite local musicians music on the go all the time, whenever and wherever he can.
Story Board - Musician
1. Sam wants to connect with more fans
Sam is the frontwoman of the Austin based band, The Dream Teams. She’s also the band manager, promoter, accountant… You get the idea. Her goal is to grow The Dream Team’s audience and be able to play SXSW one day.
2. Sam is overwhelmed by all the apps he uses
Sam currently uses a bunch of apps to manage their music, outreach, and show promotion: Spotify, Soundcloud, Facebook, Discord, YouTube, and Instagram. She’s getting frustrated and overwhelmed with how much she has to juggle between them and she’s not seeing great results.
3. Sam discovers Mixtape
After another lackluster turn out for a The Dream Teams show, she’s at her wits end. She decides to search for music management apps and comes across Mixtape. Sam is intrigued by its focus on local musicians and decides to check it out.
4. Sam is impressed with Mixtape's features
Immediately, Sam is impressed with how much the app streamlines what she has to use all the other apps to do – she can upload music, make shows announcements, and even opt in for donations! And with all the artists on the app being smaller, The Dream Teams have a better chance of standing out.
5. She creates an account for her band
Sam sets up The Dream Teams with their own account, uploads their music, and sets them up for donations. She makes a post on their social media accounts about their Mixtape account and starts to gain listeners. They have a show next week at a local bar, so she makes an announcement for it on their page and sends it to their followers.
6. Sam sees her fanbase grow using Mixtape
Over the next week, Sam has seen their fanbase grow on Mixtape and even had a local band ask to open for their show! The night of the show, the band is super excited to see they had a bigger audience than usual and feel reinvigorated about their future as a band. SXSW, here they come!
Journey Map
We continued forward and created journey maps for both users. We used this to map out how our users would feel throughout the process.
Wireframe & Prototype
Sitemap
A sitemap was developed for each side of the app to build out the tabs and screens that needed to be built.
This was a quick blueprint of the site navigation which evolved as we began to build the wireframes and prototypes.
User Flow Charts
User flows were developed to flesh out the blueprints set in the sitemap and task flows. We created user flows for multiple process such as onboarding, listener, and musician.
Onboarding
Onboarding was kept straightforward so that is felt familiar to new users. There are no coaching screens due to the dual nature of the app, but sign up allows the user to choose between signing on as a Listener or Musician.
Listeners
The Listener User Flow represented the main features we wanted to highlight on this side of Mixtape. We wanted it to feel approachable and easy to use like other major music streaming apps.
Musician
The Musician User Flow was more complex due to the higher number of components and actions. We still focused on the features we wanted to highlight but they required more steps and nuance to get just right. This side of the app is also weighted more than the Listener side – given the focus on independent artists, we wanted Mixtape to be a tool and not just another music app.
Wireframes
Each member of the team was tasked with creating wireframes for the screens of Mixtape. Nik and Naomy completed the Listener side. Blu and Nicole worked on the Musician side. Magda worked on the Onboarding. These were then voted on, annotated, and combined for what would become our mid-fi prototype.
Lo-Fi
The wireframes were upgraded to a mid-fi clickable prototype. We began to apply styling to Mixtape to get a feel for the final look of the app and see the response to it.This prototype was used for our first round of usability testing.
Mid-Fi
Style Guide
Styling that began in the Mid-Fi Prototype was then expanded upon to develop a UI Style Guide. This featured Mixtape’s color palette, typography, components, etc.
This became the guiding principle for the Hi-Fi Prototype and as it was being built out, imagery and iconography was also added to the style guide as it was being finalized.
Styling that began in the Mid-Fi Prototype was then expanded upon to develop a UI Style Guide. This featured Mixtape’s color palette, typography, components, etc.
This became the guiding principle for the Hi-Fi Prototype and as it was being built out, imagery and iconography was also added to the style guide as it was being finalized.
Hi-Fi
User Testing
Iterations
While building the Hi-Fi prototype, we also implemented the suggestions given by our users.
We fixed all of the back buttons, changed Search to Find on the Musician side, Added a coaching screen for musicians, and made the Filter button in the Search tab more obvious.
A/B Testing
Whilst we felt confident in our design given the feedback from the testing, we were still uncertain about what the design of the Play button on the music player should look like: round or square.
We presented our users with both and found the general consensus that the circle button was more appealing.
Test Results
Our final test results proved incredibly positive. We found our users responded well to the updated app and felt it easier to navigate.
The biggest impact was made with adding the coaching screens to the Musician side of the app. Each interviewee did better with the tasks with the coaching screens than previously when they weren’t there. This demonstrates a measurable improvement in the user experience of Mixtape.
Prototype
Please feel free to click around and explore the prototype below!
Future Considerations
Build your own mixtape feature
- Create 12 song playlists to share with your friends
Stronger social media features
- Feed for content, shows, etc. for musicians
- Currently happening live streams (along the top) for listeners
History for musician requests
- Allows musicians to see artists they have requested before
More robust feature set for listeners
- Exclusive paywall for bonus content, downloads, etc.
- Ability to connect with musicians
Expanded musician stats (for musician fill-ins)
- Number of shows played, “reviews”, etc.