Design for better music listening experience on mobile

Background

The client is a music streaming service provided by one of the biggest telecom business in Taiwan. The client has been adding the product features and contents to provide various service to fulfill the different user needs. As the feature and contents expand, however, the client team lost the focus on the product itself, but KPI and numbers. The client team finds it difficult to align the product core value with the team and has little understanding of their users. Consequently, the client cooperated with us to adopt the user-centered design (UCD) methodology and share the mindset in their product development process.

Output and Impact

1. I closely assisted the UX Research Lead to conduct the user research and testing sessions to understand users’ behavior and thoughts about the music streaming services, before analyzed research data, compiled the results and shared the research findings and insights with the stakeholders, to provided recommendations and supported evidence-based decisions for the client.
2. We’ve planned and held a few co-creation workshops to work with the clients’ product core team, to align the project goal, clarify their business strength/weakness, and understand their assumptions of the users and the product. These also acted as a step to bring in the UCD mindset to the client team, which did affect them to create the product with user's voice in mind.
3. We designed a more intuitive user flows based on the research and two design iterations, and delivered a detailed flowchart and wireframes for designers in the client team to work on UI/visual design.
4. I edit a video, including the key quotes from the user interviews and user testing sessions, to better communicate the user story and the value of music product with the client team. This video was also played in the clients’ PR event with 200+ participants from the music industry to share the key value of music streaming service. (Below is an illustrative example of the video)

Building Empathy: Understanding Users

How do we design a better music listening experience on mobile?

To help the client better understand the users of mobile music product and their need, we conducted 10+ semi-structured interviews and a guerrilla street interview, to understand the users' lifestyle, how they use different music products, and what role music plays in their daily life.

We asked the users to finish several tasks they would normally do using the original mobile APP, e.g., edit playlists, search, play a song, save a song, to gather the usability feedback of the current APP. At this stage, we also helped client to ideate some product ideas they've got in mind and to preliminarily validate these features, using the lo-fidelity wireframes. The client team was also invited to participate in the interviews.

We did an affinity diagramming to analyze the data. Some of the key findings are:

• A user does not care how many songs the platform provides; They only care if they can find the song they want.
• Their music listening habits in the old times (e.g., CDs, MP3, Cassettes) affect how they use the online streaming service. For example, an interviewee told us that his oldie MP3 doesn't have a playlist feature, so he doesn't use the playlist feature on the mobile music APP either.
• Consistency is important. A user would expect the same flow and logic as the digital music product they previously used.
• "Random play" brings freshness to the same playlist; The first song of the day defines the mood of the day.
• Music is not only personal but social. People share music and expect to evoke resonance among their friends.

Meanwhile, we conducted competitor product analysis and market analysis to understand the market gap in music products.

We planned co-creation workshops to share the user stories, our insights, and suggestions. We also primed the clients to discuss how their technology and business strength could align with the user need and market gap to develop the objectives of product revamp with the client team.

The Product Revamp

The product revamp started from the redesign of music player and mini player on mobile APP, as the first and essential step. Based on the previous usability testing and our design review on the current APP design, we formed up teams with the client to identify the most crucial usability issues , and the functions needed to be improved. We also prioritized the information structure and ideated the design into sketched wireframes.

Later on, our team organized the workshop outcome and built two versions of prototypes that we were going to validate in the prototype testing afterward.

Paper/Lo-fi prototyping & Testing

To quickly validate the concept and user flow, we first tested with a paper/lo-fi prototype to remain the flexibility and save time.

We invited the music APP users and conducted interviews & concept testing. We have the users walk through how they use the music APP, asked the interviewee to do the card sorting to understand how they perceive the feature and information that music player provides.

We then asked their opinions about the current prototype and primed them to move around or to add the UI elements, to communicate their thoughts and imaginations of a music player that is easy to use.

Digital/Hi-fi prototyping & Testing

We wrapped up the feedback from the lo-fi prototype testing and created two hi-fi versions of the prototype, working with designers from the client team, using Principle. With the digital prototype testing, we gathered the user feedback on not only the usability but interaction and visual style.

We designed several tasks (e.g., save the music to a specific playlist, switch to random play...) and tested these tasks on each version, to understand the more desired design.

Finally, we analyzed the data gathered from the testing sessions, shared the results to the client and detailed documents for the client to work on the product revamp.

Learnings and Reflection

Though I cannot unveil much information about the project outcome, I did learn a lot from this project that I would love to share.

• When conducting a user interview, always refer to their actual behavior besides listening to their thoughts. We often noticed that when a user says, “I’m not familiar with this product feature.” “I rarely use this function; it’s okay to kill this function. I don’t need it at all” in the interview and card-sorting sessions. However, they still operate those subtle features they claim “not needed” as we observe how they use their favorite music APPs or our hi-fi prototype. They use the features but take it for granted.
• Design inspirations come from the user’s lifestyle. When opting for which design we’re going to keep on working, it’s crucial to align with the product team who we’re designing for -- What’s their lifestyle? What do they do every day? What do they need & why do they need them?
  • Are we designing for a parent who has to take care of the child, do the household chores all the time, and don’t have much time to operate the device with their hands? What design can enable a quick and precise music playing experience?
  • Are we designing for a busy person who doesn’t have time to operate with the APP, yet eagers to discover new music they would love? What design enables them to seek out their new favorite music?
  • Are we designing for a person who would spend hours immersed in the music APP? What design fulfill their need to discover in various music genre and curating playing lists genuinely?
• To create smooth user flow, apart from the UI of the music APP, the designers should also consider the device they use and the touchpoints other from APP UI itself. For example, many people play the music with earphones or Bluetooth speakers; therefore, it’s essential also to consider how they use the earphone remote and the buttons on the speakers. Also, it’s common that people multitask on the mobile device; therefore, it’s also important to design the notification center, control center, and lock screen, to fulfill the user need.
• Aside from the designers, other team members such as engineers, marketers, customer service team are also much familiar with the product; some are very close to the user's voice. Their opinions are also valuable. Involving these team members in the design process builds a consensus in the product team, which may also lead to better execution of the design. My project lead came up with a way to closely cooperate and align the process with the client, which I found awesome to work with the client: We have a remote standup meeting every morning to briefly share the daily research process; the teams would give comments to each other. In this way, the team did work as a team; The team member can share thoughts and wouldn't feel left behind. It's also valuable to have the team immersed in the human-centered design mindset together, and further see them share this mindset with the other team member afterward.