Chloë Meyer
UX Designer
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Programs: Figma, Google Forms
Team: Chloe Meyer
Time Span: Dec 2022 – Present (Work-in-progress)
Melomaniacs (placeholder name) is a personal project I started in December 2022 to exercise and improve my product design skills.
This actually started as a daily UI design challenge that I became invested in and decided to flesh out as a full app. Right now I am pausing working on UI design to focus on UX processes, because I need research and testing to back up my interface designs. I will periodically update this page to showcase my progress.
For the UI design challenge I chose to design a music-streaming app like Spotify and Apple Music. After deciding to fully prototype the app, I want the app to have a more niche purpose because there are already so many popular music apps. I’m still considering what the new purpose of this app will be, though I am considering an informational app to showcase award-winning artists and behind-the-scenes looks at their music-making processes.
There could be audio interviews, vlog-type videos in the studio, demo tracks, and more exclusive content from artists, producers, and musicians. I am still determining the source of this information, but I am considering integrating YouTube, podcasts, Wikipedia, and perhaps a creator-mode for artists to upload their own content. This platform would also be beneficial for new, upcoming artists to get discovered.
These are the qualifications I must meet in order to know when I'm done and can call this project a success:
As of February 1st, I have many mockup UI designs that may or may not be part of the final app but can serve as inspiration. To start my user research, I conducted a survey of 34 participants to gather data on possible app features and needs of users. The demographics of my survey are primarily Caucasian, Latino/Hispanic, and Asian; ages 18-24.
In my survey, I asked participants to pick one of these descriptions that they feel best describes them. I wanted to know what matters most to them when using a music-streaming app. I found that 40% described themselves as "explorers."
Type descriptions:
Explorer - Likes discovering new artists and sounds
Nerd - Likes dissecting a song and the music-creation process
Casual - Likes listening to music in general
Playlist-Sender - Likes curating playlists and sharing with others
Singer - Likes knowing the lyrics and singing along
Other - Something else
I also asked participants which platform they use most often to listen to music. Spotify was the dominant choice with 57%. I see a connection between these two graphs because Spotify is known for its curated playlists, "New Music Mondays" and "Spotify Wrapped," which are all personalized for each user and show users new music they think they'll like using Spotify's algorithm. People who describe themselves as "explorers" would therefore be drawn to Spotify for these reasons. Spotify is the best app for discovering new music and other music-streaming apps can't compete with that.
In my app I hope to cater to the next largest group represented in the types graph: the Music Nerd–those who want to know more about the music-making process. I will pay extra attention to responses from those who picked "Nerd" to see how they answered the next questions about possible app features and what they currently like and dislike about their current music-streaming app of choice.
As mentioned before, I am putting my interface design on pause until I do more research and planning on the app’s features. I am currently making decisions based on the survey results and continuing my research.
As I continue my research, these are questions I will keep in mind and hope to answer:
Here is what I need to complete in the next stages of this project:
1. Research
2. User Interviews
3. User/task flows
4. Wireframes
5. Usability testing
6. Usability report
7. Finalize interface designs
Looking back, the weakest area is the quiz. I would change both its visuals and performance. The text size is too large and would look more professional if smaller. The questions aren’t phrased well, they should be more to the point and the answer options are unclear because they lack descriptive text, which is not accessible for visually-impaired people.
For being my first endeavor into prototyping and product design, placing in the top ten is impressive and this is one of my proudest projects.
