MiXEL
Personalizing your music expereince
Where
Austin, Texas
What
Native Mobile App (iOs)
Role
Designer, Researcher
Category
Social, Music
When
January 2022 - March 2022
User Research
User Interviews
Affinity Map
Persona
User Flow
Wire Frames
Moderated Testing
Branding
Style Guide
UI/UX Design
High-Fidelity Protoype
Prototyping Validation
Overview
Music is meant to be shared, heard, touched, talked about and enjoyed with our friends. The current state of how we listen to music has changed our relationship with music—and because of this I think we are sharing music less. We no longer spend countless hours creating mixed tapes to share with our friends. And even though Vinyl sales have become more popular—it’s clear that streaming music is still how most people get their music. I wanted to dive deeper into this and see how others are discovering and sharing their music. I believe there is a gap that needs to be filled in how we share and experience our music. I’m hoping through this exercise to fill that gap and provide a more personable music experience that feels more like a mixed tape.
The Problem
Sharing music with friends has become impersonal and often songs or albums are shared via text as a link—and end up never being heard or listened to. People need a central space to share music with their friends.
The Solution
Create a space that is dedicated to a users music collection so they are better able to share and organize their music in a fun and personalized way.
Process
The Double Diamond process is a design methodology that is used to guide teams through the design process. It consists of four phases: Discover, Define, Design, and Deliver. In this UX case study, I used the Double Diamond process to guide my research and design efforts, starting with the Discover phase to understand the problem and the users, then moving on to the Define phase to clarify the problem and establish design criteria, the Design phase to generate prototypes and test design solutions, and the Deliver phase to implement the final solution.
Discover
The purpose of this research is to discover the ways that users typically organize, share and talk about their music collection. Since we no longer own our music we need to find away to own our collection list and how we share it. This will give us insight on how users relate to digital music and what is important to them.
The Method
I prepared 10 questions and would let the conversation flow organically. I spent around an hour with each participant finding out their experiences with sharing and organizing music. The interviews were recorded over zoom.
Participants
I was able to interview 2 women and 2 men between the ages of 35 and 45.
Notable Comments
If I don’t save a music suggestion a friend sent right away I forget about it.
-Rich
Because of the the algorithm my Spotify music suggestions feel homogenous
-Jen
Music gets lost in Spotify and it’s sometimes is hard to find what was shared with me.
-Amanda
I want to experience my friends and other peoples music in a more personable way
-John
Discovery Spotify doesn’t work because I play daughters music and the algorithm includes a mix of music that isn’t for me.
-Rich
Define
Affinity Map
To better understand the users I made an Affinity map to organize the research into categories that would inform the user flow and persona. This helped me to quickly see some common pain points and motivations.
Personable
If I had more control of my music profile I would show my top 5 for the month etc.
Wants a more personal experience.
More control of my experience
Music is personable for me
Sharing is not personable anymore
I would like to have a personal realtionship with music again
Discover
Discovery Spotify doesn’t work because she plays her kids music and the algorithm includes a mix of music that isn’t for her.
I follow people Spotify suggest based on my music
Using just Spotify to discover music gives you a ton of options but can be overwhelming and sometimes it creates loops that makes the music feel homogenous
Finds it hard to discover new music on Spotify becuase it is overwheling and it’s suggestions usually feels like an infinite loop
Ownership
He likes to have a hard copy of his music
Misses the visual aspect of tangible albums
Organize
She organizes her music based on mood (like exercise, bike riding, cooking, summertime vibe etc.)
Currently she orgnaizes her music using Spotify
She makes a playlist every 2 months for herself and sometimes collborates with her husband
She creates list and documents to keep track of music she wants to check out
I would to feel like I have ownership of my music and list.
Need to somehow keep track of artist I want to explore from music my friends send
I currentyl don’t have a good sysytem to organize my music and if I don’t check out the music when it is sent to me I lose it in the ether.
Music gets lost in Spotify and it’s sometimes is hard to find what was shared with you.
I don’t have a good way or method to organize my music and it generally gets lost inside spotify
Commmunity/Sharing
I would like if I had a favorite song or looking at other peoples curated song based on their songs. Like sometimes I go to reddit and see what list I can find.
Be able to see what my friends listen to and Streaming the same thing they were listening to. I
Having a music profile would allow converstation and community around the music.
Wants to experience other friends and peoples music in a more personable way
Being able to have conversations around music.
Making music more social
Findings
After I made the affinity map I pulled out the common motivations and pain points and categorized them to better understand the users goals.
Goals and Motivations
More personable experience when sharing music
Be able to create groups for friends to join and share music together in segmented genres
More control over their feed and what people see
Be able to form a private or public room that friends can join to listen to playlist streamed live.
More curated experience of music that isn’t driven by an algorithm
Pain Points
Can’t find or remember what music shared with them via messaging apps
Finds it hard to discover new music on Spotify becuase it is overwhelming and it’s suggestions usually feels like an infinite loop
Sharing music inside Spotify is clunky and requires users to leave app and send in a their messaging platform
Spotify doesn’t work in their need to discover new music and often leads to them listening to the same things over and over.
Persona
Based on my research I was able to create a persona to help further my understanding and paint a clearer picture of the users.
How might we...
To organize my findings into actionable statements, I used a technique called How Might We statements. HMW questions are small but strong questions that allow us to reframe our insights into opportunity areas and innovate on problems found during user research.
How might we be able to help Jason and his friends share and organize their music in a fun personalized way?
How might we create a space for sharing music that lets you feel like you are connecting in real time?
How might we make it easier to discover music from friends?
How might we make music be more social?
Once I went through all my research I was ready to start sketching out my flows and the initial low-fidelity wireframes
Time to start designing
Design
Crazy 8’s
To expand on my thought process, I used the Crazy 8 exercises to quickly generate ideas during the design phase, building on insights gained during the research phase.
2x2 Matrix
Using the 2x2 method I prioritized the essential features necessary to better understand my approach and focus areas.
User Flow
After priortizing the features I created a user flow to inform the design and show a main task of how to create a playlist and share with friends.
Low to Mid-Fidelity Wire Frames
Low to mid-fidelity prototype testing allowed me to better understand how users expected to complete the tasks I was focusing on. By studying their touch and swipe gestures — and more importantly, having a dialogue with them about what they expected and when — I knew which adjustments needed to be made to lay the foundation for a more fully realized high fidelity prototype. Small details such as actionable and consistent iconography, and consistent paths to get back, would become important elements of the design system.
Testing Round 1 (moderated)
For each task I tested 3 users and here are the results:
Testing Round 2
For each task I tested 7 new users. I tested the 2 orignal task and a few new ones. I was curious to see if changing the notification had an impact on completing the task and if an users got stuck on task 1 with the updated changes.
High–Fidelity UI Design
Once the initial flow was complete—I began by defining the app's logo, fonts and colors, and then moved on to designing a few key screens.
Logo
Fonts
Work Hard & Be Nice To People
H1:Roboto Bold | 36
Work Hard & Be Nice To People
H2:Roboto Bold | 24
Work Hard & Be Nice To People
H3:Roboto Bold | 14
Global Colors
13 High-Fidelity Designs were Created
Including two different flows (the main flow for sharing and the collection, stream and feed flow) that could be used for testing in further design stages.
High-Fidelity Prototype
I connected my high fidelity designs into a clickable prototype. That will allow me to test the app on a first group of users. These screens represent the main user flow for sharing.
These screens represent user flow inside Collection, Feed and Streams.
Prototype Validation
For each task I tested 7 new users. This time I used the hi-fidelity prototype to see how the new design performed.
Prototype Update Concept
Because of time constraints, I wasn’t able to run a second usability study on the updated prototype. However, I have updated it by adding post, followers and following at the top as a clickable indicator that quickly shows users the social aspect.
