myousic
A lot of casual musicians want to progress beyond playing by themselves at home. myousic is an app to help get these people off the couch and go play music with other people.
This is my General Assembly 10-week solo UX project.
A lot of casual musicians want to progress beyond playing by themselves at home. myousic is an app to help get these people off the couch and go play music with other people.
This is my General Assembly 10-week solo UX project.
Many amateur musicians would like to play music with others, but they have trouble finding others who are musically compatible, so they stay home and play music alone.
These folks:
The problem, I suspect: They do not have a good way of finding musicians of similar abilities, musical tastes and levels of ambition.
I interviewed four musicians from the perceived target market, men and women ages 18-48. A common theme emerged among all interviewees:
A kindred spirit far outweighs concerns about compatible skill levels and musical tastes.
“[Playing music is] an intimate activity.”
“Life is too short to hang out with people I don’t really like.”
“[Playing music is] kind of like our bowling night: hang out, drink a beer, play a show once a month or so.”
This was not the expected result.
With research data in hand, I revised my hypothesis:
The less experienced musician does not have an easy way to find kindred spirits to play music with, so they stay home and play music alone on the couch.
I identified and analyzed three technological solutions for musicians to connect with each other: two websites and an app.
They can be extremely thorough and detailed ways to find a musician, but not a kindred spirit.
What else out there specializes in connecting kindred spirits? Dating apps.
myousic will collect as much insight as possible about someone's personality, tendencies, preferences, what they like and don't like, both music- and non-music-related, then crunch that data and compare it to others to find kindred spirits.
A dating app for musicians, without the dating.
(Ideally I would have tested the validity of this idea before further development, but for the purposes of this class project I had to assume it was brilliant and proceed accordingly.)
I mapped insights from user interviews to distill the target users' goals, motivations, and frustrations.
All interviewees placed greatest importance on finding a kindred spirit. Data varied with regard to desire for finding others with:
These attributes are commonly part of a user's profile description, so I decided not to make special accommodations for these.
Meet Jen, born from the user interview affinity map. I focused on Jen as I addressed user goals, motivations, and frustrations.
Tool: Sketch
What will Jen want to do to meet her goals?
A partial list:
User stories begin to delineate a user flow. From this flow I can start to extrapolate a feature set for a Minimum Viable Product.
This was my first opportunity to simplify, by setting aside user stories that weren't directly applicable to the MVP.
Tool: Draw.io
For the MVP I want features that users most expect and have the highest impact. On the 2x2 matrix, I asked two potential users to rate each of these features accordingly.
I was surprised that showing other users' locations on a map was neither expected nor high impact. Score another point for research vs. assumptions. Also score a point for personal privacy and security.
Testing feature set, information architecture, pain points, and how users see themselves accomplishing their goals. This was an open sort of MVP features with blank cards provided so the testers could add features as deemed important.
Problems discovered:
Solutions:
Results: In subsequent rounds of testing, users were observed using the prototype as intended without showing or reporting these problems.
Sections:
Tool: Sketch
Screens are laid out according to feature prioritization and commonly understood design patterns.
Paper prototype usability test tasks:
Tested by three users with paper sketches in hand. Results raised no red flags! Functionality was clear, and features were where they needed to be.
Tools: Pentel P205 with 4B lead, paper
I cleaned up the basic layout in the sketches, annotated them, established a pattern from which to expand the number of screens for testing.
Revisions: added obvious Home button to global nav (app logo) so user can access main results screen from anywhere.
Tool: Sketch
I created 25 more screens and enlisted testers.
Usability testing tasks:
Problems: Noted in chart (right).
Decisions:
View hi-fi prototype on InVision
This step incorporates one subsequent wireframe iteration not shown, and adds a more polished final design.
Changes from first wireframes, other than visual design:
Test showed improvement across the board. The glaring exception is the usefulness and/or placement of Search, still not always discovered when appropriate or even when it is the only option to get the desired results. This will be addressed in the onboarding process.
With greater social capabilities added, I could see this becoming primarily a social app for music fans: sections devoted to individual bands, group chats, discussions, meetups for shows, and the like.
Why?