Sound Flow
A music listening platform
My Role
I worked as an interaction designer with one of my team members on this project. I designed personas and user flows for the platform, created low and high level sitemap and performed various rounds of test to generate information architecture for the site.
Skills Developed
Comparative analysis, Interaction design, Information architecture, Prototyping, Usability testing
Tools used
About the project
SoundFlow is a platform for online music experience where people can listen to music, socialize with friends, can buy merchandise and get updates about tours and events of various artists.
Drawing upon theory and principles, design information architecture and user interfaces for music platform which provide holistic experience of listening to music and buying merchandise.
Drawing upon theory and principles, design information architecture and user interfaces for music platform which provide holistic experience of listening to music and buying merchandise.
Problem Statement
We conducted preliminary research and interviews with our target audience and found that users had limited experience of just listening to music. Participants were interested in knowing about artists, buying event tickets or merchandise of the artists on the same platform instead of going to other sites.
Also, interactivity among the friends and people with similar music taste was missing.
Also, interactivity among the friends and people with similar music taste was missing.
Target Audience
People who are avid music listeners and who use onlineplatform to listen to music and often buys merchandise or tickets to events.
Guiding Research Questions
- How can platform provide music listening as well as buying experience to its users?
- How easily and successfully do users find the products or information they are looking for on the website?
- How easily can users access their saved playlists or their favorited music?
Major Content Items
We proposed to include following content items as per our requirements and research data. The major content items includes
Search, Artist Profile and User Profile page.
Search, Artist Profile and User Profile page.
Personas
Persona 1: Artist
Persona 2: Avid music listener
Persona 3: Not avid music listener
Userflow
Scenario 1: Browse/Search a song
The user wants to search a song of their choice.
Scenario 2: Connecting with friends
The user wants to browse through timeline to see friends activities.
Sitemap
Testing Strategies
We performed various rounds of testing using Optimal Workshop to test navigation across the site and organize content so that users can navigate easily and efficiently.
Next step, we created a content inventory with levels and categories names which is used for first round of Hybrid Card sorting. For this test, participants were asked to organize each card under categories or create a new category if they think otherwise. Results from this card sorting test were analyzed and two rounds of Tree jack test were performed to generate the information architecture for the site.
Next step, we created a content inventory with levels and categories names which is used for first round of Hybrid Card sorting. For this test, participants were asked to organize each card under categories or create a new category if they think otherwise. Results from this card sorting test were analyzed and two rounds of Tree jack test were performed to generate the information architecture for the site.
Creating content inventory
To create a content inventory, we researched music platforms like Spotify, Shazam and Amazon music to get the initial ideas about what content can be useful for our project. We iterated on our primary goals of our website and carried out research to gather the information for the site. We later created categories and labels from our user research data and created a content inventory.
Hybrid Card Sorting
The first round of card sorting was hybrid card sorting which was successfully completed by five participants. We recruited 8 participants for the test and discarded 3 participants’ data because of incomplete testing. The test included 28 cards and 6 predefined categories. Also, users were allowed to create their own category for the cards. We asked participants pre study questions to classify participants.
From the Standardization Grid obtained from Optimal Sort we analyzed our data and few findings of Hybrid card sort were:
- Labels related to category name Artist like ‘Artist information’, ‘Bio of artist’, ‘Follow artist’ and ‘lists of songs for some artist’ were successfully related to Artist category. All users were able to categorize these labels and relate it with the ‘Artist’ category.
[ Label ] - 3 out of 5 participants categorized labels and it seemed that there was room for improvement in better organizing these cards.
[ Label ] - It seemed from the data that there was confusion in categorizing labels because participants showed mixed views in categorizing these labels. Also, there were some labels which did not show a clear picture of where these labels could be categorized.
[ Label ]
Tree hierarchy
Task-based Test
We included 5 tasks for the Treejack test and used labels and cards from the hybrid card test after analyzing and making some changes. There were in total 6 participants for the study. Overall results for this test were:
- Out of all the tasks completed by participants, 76% ended up at a "correct" answer.
- 84% of answers were chosen without backtracking.
Individual task results were:
Task 1: Details regarding events
Scenario: You recently came to know that one of your favorite artists is on tour and you want to know the details regarding events. Where would you look for it?
- 80% of the participants successfully completed the task while 20% of participants failed to complete the task.
- Also, the directness of the task was 100% by the 4 out of 5 participants.
Task 2: looking for new songs/artists to listen
Scenario: You’re in a mood to listen to good music and you are looking for new songs/artists to listen. Where would go?
- 100% of participants successfully completed the task which was a direct success.
Task 3: see the posts of your friends or what your favorite artists are posting
Scenario: You are feeling bored and you want to see the posts of your friends or what your favorite artists are posting. Where would you go to see that?
- The success rate of the task was 100% out of which 60% was direct success.
Task 4: Purchase merchandise
Scenario: You want to purchase merchandise of your favorite artist. Where would you go?
- 80% of the participants failed this task to find merchandise. We planned to improve this task so that participants find it easy to look for merchandise.
Task 5: find the playlist you created
Scenario: You recently created a new study songs playlist, and you want to play those songs. Where will you go to find the playlist you created?
- 80% of the participants successfully completed the task of finding the playlist with directness of 80%.
First Click testing
We performed first click testing to check how easy it is for users to find the intended information on the site. It helped us in validating our interface and if it is clean and easy for users to interact with the site. We performed first click testing for two tasks and achieved 100% success rate. Two primary tasks we tested were:
- Searching for a song
- Finding the newsfeed tab
Wireframes
Low-fidelity screens
High-fidelity screens
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