A digital tool for music curation

Allow users to get relevant music suggestions on demand, manage their content seamlessly, and expand their musical taste in a meaningful way.

goal

role

UX Research

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UX Design

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UI Design

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Branding

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UX Research | UX Design | UI Design | Branding |

For our Graduation Project at Vancouver Film School (Digital Design - Interactive Stream) we were given the task of creating and managing an end-to-end product; applying the concepts and learnings from our studies during the program.
*Disclaimer
This project was produced under the influence of heavy metal 🤘🏽

Today’s algorithms within streaming platforms are great at tracking our listening habits. Yet these fail to see and understand the extents and complexity behind our musical identity, creating dissatisfaction and frustration in the user’s experience.

Problem

Contextual Research
User Interviews & Data Points
User Profiles
Affinity & Empathy Map
Experience Map
Customer Journey Map

UX Research

data points

User profiles

“ I think my musical taste is too weird and Spotify doesn’t recommend me music that fits my taste."

“It takes me too much time to find somehting I like in my weekly discovery”

“Spotify creates a sound bubble based on my recent listens,I usually know everything it is suggesting”

Customer Journey Map

There is a wide variety of content, but managing, filtering and understanding automated content is overwhelming and feels like a big task.

Key findings

Users feel stuck in musical ruts, encountering homogenized content that is difficult to escape.

The amount of effort and time is no proportional to the rewards the user gets. Suggestions lack context and users can’t easily determine which content is valuable.

Extra exploration needs to be done on outside platforms, specialized blogs and following people from the music industry.

Detected and analyse the gaps and possibilities in their current process, to mark the direction and main intention of the app.

Ideation

mental map

Insights

It is all about the IMPULSE; the first phase & satisfying that first moment the user needs to trigger an emotion.

Then allowing them to stay in that flow in then next stages through a seamless and flexible process.

UX Definition

Main Features

Accuracy & Quality

Based on their current mood and context.

Control the bounds for exploration and get bolder recommendations.

Unique and personal system to the user. Saves controls presets.

Time = Reward

Filter search results based on different musical parameters. Adjust on the go.

Encounter similar sounds based on a song within their listening experience.

Wireframes

The process was focused solely in polishing the flows and making them as comprehensive as possible. Using concepts like progressive disclosure to place the information the user would need at given stage at the right time.