Learn. Grow. Dominate
Project
Conceptual projectTimeline
6 MonthsMy role
UX/UI DesignerUX Researcher
Deliverables
Affinty MapPersonas
User Flows
Journey Maps
Sitemap
Wireframes
Prototype
Overview
Believing in your musical talent and having the confidence to share it with the world is one thing, but actually making a successful career out of it is another, especially within todays challenging music industry. This is where Riddim comes in.
Riddim is a responsive web app enabling new music artists to develop their careers by booking video call consultations with mentors with extensive knowledge and experience of the music industry.
This was my main UX project while studying a part time course at Careerfoundry. Riddim was designed with a mobile first approach to help ensure that users' experience would be seamless on any device.
The Process
Problem
New music artists need to quickly grasp the multi-faceted music industry as many struggle without professional guidance. In addition, unsigned yet highly experienced independent artists need a way to monetise their knowledge and experience of the industry.
Solution
Create an app that enables users to search and book video call consultations with mentors that have experience and expertise in their specific needs.
Competitive Analysis
I found that there weren’t any apps that focused solely on mentorship of musicians so I looked at four other products that solved similar issues that people face within the music industry and beyond. A S.W.O.T analysis was conducted on each one to highlight their strengths and weaknesses.
Fivver - Connects people with freelancers (tech orientated).
Gig town - Shows where certain artists are performing.
Cosound - Helps musicians/artists collaborate together.
Bandfriend - Also Helps musicians/artists collaborate together but more U.S based.
From the analysis I drew several insights:
- Most of the apps strengths were that they were the only apps of their kind.
- Major strength/weakness in how much they respect and act upon their users’ advice on app issues.
- Small apps need a big push in advertising and social media presence
User Interviews
I interviewed 4 music artists over Zoom to gain insight into the needs and frustrations of potential users. My first round of interviews didn’t provide the valuable insights I needed and I felt this was down to the nature of the questions not being conversational enough. I wrote a whole new set of interview questions with a more informal, conversational tone and began a second round of interviews on 7 different artists.
I chose to conduct more interviews in the second round as I found some interviewee’s views conflicting and this interested me so I wanted a bigger sample size to draw insights from.
I asked the interviewees about their:
- Views on giving and receiving mentorship
- What tools they currently use if they need advice/guidance
- What beginners need to know if looking at music as a career
- What they would want to see in a product that deals their music related frustrations.
Interviewees were between 23-35. Signed artists are with independent UK labels, not majors.
Holly Mac
UnsignedR&B Singer’Figuring out how to look professional is just the begining’
Parallax
UnsignedHip Hop Artist’Looking back I could have saved so much time and money if I did things differently’
Yetizm
UnsignedEDM Producer’I feel artists are open to helping other artists as long as they mutally benefit’
John Tulling
SignedLead Guitarist’The music is just the fun part’
Verbz
SignedHip Hop Artist’I think alot of these new guys have no idea what kind of work you have to put in’
Vitamin G
SignedGrime Artist’I never thought of reaching out to people at the begining, it felt embarassing’
Francesca
SignedJazz / R&B singer’I was lucky to have people around me I could learn from early on’
I gathered all the main points into an affinity map to help break down the qualitative data and draw some more concrete insights.
Insights from interviews
- Users feel that coming across as an annoyance or irritation is a factor when requesting advice, guidance or feedback.
- Users are mixed on how much current support there is for new artists, however, all agree that the career & business side to the industry is confusing and professional advice in this area is hard to attain.
- Users would like a product that can help with ‘levelling up’ in the industry, connecting to decision makers and also helping others that they see potential in.
User Personas
To empathise with users, I built 2 user personas based upon the different frustrations and needs that were expressed by the potential users in their interviews.
These personas make up the 2 main users of Riddim, that being mentors and those seeking mentorship.
Anthony - New Mentor
’If I can make money on the side helping people develop as artists thats a win win situation!’
Age: 37
Location: London
Background: Ex-signed artist
Occupation: Studio engineer, producer and small label owner
Industry exp: 10 years
Goals and Needs:
- Find a new stream of income using his industry knowledge & experience
- Focus more on artist management and talent scouting.
- Help young and naive artists.
Frustrations:
- Lack of artists he works with that have potential, wants a way to find more that he can work on developing.
- Knows the industry is tough and is depressed working with artists that have no plan or real understanding of the industry.
Finanda - New user
’I feel that I can do this! I just need someone who can believe in me and guide me.’
Age: 20
Location: Southampton
Background: Singing & Songwriting
Occupation: Student and part time work
Industry exp: None / Beginner
Goals and Needs:
- To understand the process of branding and marketing herself
- Find promoters that can get her her first live shows
- Need to network with people in her specific type of scene
Frustrations:
- Gets stressed thinking about the complexity of starting out
- Self doubt and feels lack of confidence despite knowing she has talent
- Tired of spending hours searching for valuable advice online or on social media
To better understand the experience the persona’s would go through when using the app, and to identify the features needed for them to achieve their goals, I created two customer journey maps.
User Flows
With research findings in mind, I developed 2 user flows that illustrated the booking appointment feature of the app and how a new user would sign up and personalise their profile page. This helped me to identify the screens and interactions that the users would have to go through in order to achieve their goal.
Sitemap
After identifying a set of major features, I mapped out the information architecture to organise the hierarchy of the app.
To help develop a structure and navigation that’s as intuitive as possible, I also conducted an open card sort online using optimalsort with 10 participants, which allowed me to make further iterations to the sitemap.
Wireframes
Low - Fidelity
Now that I had enough information on the key features of the app I began to sketch out some wireframes on paper then using Balsamiq.
Mid - Fidelity
I then made mid fidelity wireframes in Adobe XD with the aim of turnng them into a clickable prototype for user testing. At this point I wasn’t concerned with the UI elements, I was mainly focused on the organisation and layout of features.
Onboarding flow
Home Screen
Mentor Search flow
Message screen
Time to Test!
Usability test were conducted on 7 different participants that represented the target audience (1 session musician, 5 new artists and one music promoter.) The tests were conducted remotely in-person via Zoom. They required participants to complete 4 basic task flows.
- Sign up and onboard
- Search for a mentor and message them
- Book a session with a mentor
- Add a new photo to your user profile
What did I find?
I created a rainbow spread sheet to make the usability analysis focused and clear in order to see trends, insights, and possible solutions that would be addressed in the future iterations of the app. The errors that users made were rated by the Neilsen’s usability severity scale.
The main findings were:
- The global search was confusing
- The pop-up modal was distracting
- The edit mode on the profile page wasn’t intuitive
These issues affected the length of time it took participants to complete tasks, in some cases I had to provide soft prompts to users that were stuck.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
Before
After
The solve the issue with users editing their profile:
- Removed all the edit buttons.
- Made a new screen with clear editable options.
- Added a clear ‘Add new photo’ button in the user’s photo section.
Before
After
The solve the issue with session booking pop up modal:
- Made a new screen for users to select their desired time slot.
- Once a time had been selected, a confirmation would pop up asking if they wanted to save the session or continue.
Before
After
The solve the issue with the global search:
- Gave each of the main features their own search function.
- I also gave the option of different views for these screens, such as on the sessions screen users could move between upcoming, previous and saved sessions.
Round 2
The high fidelity Figma prototype was used for the second round of remote in-person testing. It was performed on 5 different participants, 3 of which were involved in the music industry and 2 were unprofessional musicians. It was clear from the speed at which the tasks were completed that the iterations had made a massive difference. Also not one participant needed a prompt!
There were still issues raised such as:
- Onboarding not engaging enough.
- Back button being too close to the profile icon.
- Social media handles on profiles too big.
To help make the onboarding more engaging I :
- Removed unnecessary copy.
- Created a more engaging process of multiple choice selection rather then dropdowns.
Before
After
Before
After
To solve the back button/profile icon proximity issue:
- Moved the profile icon into the bottom navigation and also chose to store the user settings in the user’s profile as it made sense and also freed up room.
- Decreased the size of the social media handles.
Preference Tests
I also ran a few preference tests on the login and onboarding pages to see what aesthetic and copy was most engaging. These were sent to 20 participants that fitted the target age group of the app.
- Users mentioned they preferred the blue version and the fact that it had the option to log in through social media.
- With the onboarding page users preferred less copy and said the image of the singer was more engaging.
- They also mentioned the skip button was in a better position, preventing it being tapped by accident.
Final Mockups!
- Riddim’s onboarding highlights its benefits to users then begins to personalise mentor recommendations to the user’s musical background
- A seemless booking process allows users to choose specific topics they want to talk about in their consultation session, or save open slots to book later.
- Users and mentors can personalise their profile to attract clients and show of their experience.
Style Guide
After I was happy with the final visual design of the app I made a style guide to ensure future iterations would follow the same branding guidelines.
Moving Forward
- Designing Riddim has been a lot of fun and I intend to keep iterating parts of it in the future. If I were to look at launching it in the future I would start connecting with someone in music marketing that can help me assess Riddim’s product-market fit and to see what music genres and what cities would it be best to focus on.
- The next step would be to create a MVP alongside a coder to see how accessible it is to users.
- Of course I would also like to connect with more potential users through interviews to see what their suggestions would be to improve the MVP, and if there could be more features to add to those already existing.
- As Riddim is intended to be a responsive app I also intend to build a tablet and desktop prototype so I can adapt and personalise the experience of Riddim for seperate breakpoints.