A dedicated space for music lovers to share their opinions.
January 2023 — March 2023, Remote
A dedicated space to help connect, foster, and maintain the broader music community.
My Roles
UX Researcher
UX + UI Designer
Product Tester
Timeline
Research — 3 weeks
Design — 3 weeks
Testing — 1 week
Tools
Figma
FaceTime
Maze
The Problem
Music lovers do not have a dedicated space where they can directly share their thoughts and opinions with the broader music community.
Community plays a large role in the music industry. Avid music listeners love to interact with one another and discuss their opinions on their favorite artists or the latest album release. The problem, however, is that there is no dedicated space for individuals to connect with each other and share these opinions. While they can discuss their opinions on social media platforms like Twitter, those platforms are highly saturated with a variety of other content which makes it hard to keep topics separated. Due to this, I began to brainstorm product ideas that would help individuals share their opinions on music while simultaneously fostering and maintaining the broader music community.
The Solution
A product where users can write and share reviews about their favorite artists and music with friends and the broader music community.
Filterable feeds.
Homepage with two distinguishable feeds with unique filters that help users to control the type of content that they see.
Personalized groups.
Create dedicated group pages to share or read reviews from select users to further narrow down the content that you see.
Customizable reviews.
Create engaging reviews with a personal touch by adding in images and then use custom tags to help categorize the reviews on your profile.
Background Research
People are motivated to share and read reviews for a variety of reasons.
Have you ever talked to a friend about a restaurant they just neeeeed to try?
What about telling your friend about the movie you saw last weekend that was soooo much better than you expected?
Reviews are shared more often than one might think and for a variety of reasons, but what leads people to share them in the first place?
In a study conducted by Trustpilot, it was found that sharing reviews helps people to feel a sense of expression or empowerment. This could be due to reviews acting as an outlet through which people can share their personal opinions and experiences. It is also through sharing reviews that people begin to feel a sense of communal ethos which, in effect, helps them to feel as if they are helping to build and maintain a community of like-minded individuals.
In terms of reading reviews, however, there are underlying reasons as to why people do it. One of these reasons is a psychological phenomenon known as social proof. This phenomenon refers to the idea that people reference the behavior of others to guide their own which makes sense since humans are naturally curious beings. Through referencing the behavior of others, particularly their reviewing behavior, it helps people remove and decision-making uncertainty.
Competitive Analysis
There are several products out there that help users to share their opinions on various types of media, but only one of them focuses on music.
In order to gain more insight into this specific industry, I researched a few currently available products with features that aim to accomplish a goal that is similar to my own:
Musicboard
During my research, I found a product titled Musicboard which would be the direct competitor to my product. With most of its features being similar to other products in the space, one feature that stood out to me was the Review Statistics. This is a pro feature that allows users to see an overview of their music listening history broken out by different categories.
Another product in the space with similar offerings is Letterboxd which allows fans of cinema to rate and review their favorite films. While it’s offerings are similar, I noticed that the product’s home feed wasn’t as intuitive as it could be, but they did offer a feature that allows users to tag their posts. This helps users to organize their reviews into personalized categories for later reference.
Goodreads
Letterboxd
Goodreads is the last product I researched during my competitive analysis. This product offers users a space to share their opinions on their favorite books. I also found the home screen to be not very intuitive and felt as if they offered more ways to discover books than reviews. One feature that stood out to me was the Reading Challenge which helps users set and track reading goals.
TikTok
Lastly, I looked at TikTok as an indirect competitor for my project. TikTok is home to many conversations and topics of discussion. Users interact with each other and talk about personal stories, news, and entertainment. I really wanted to capture that social nature, but specifically for music conversations. I also like how TikTok’s algorithm shows content specifically tailored to you.
The first thing I noticed about each of these products (excluding TikTok) is that all seem to offer the same set of features like review feeds, new post screens, and a search functionality to discover new music, films, books, etc. For Musicboard, specifically, there seemed to be a lot of crossover from what is currently available to some of my ideas that I’ve been brainstorming like the Review Statistics. With these findings, it was time to decide on the specific problem I am looking to solve and begin my user interviews to gain insight into what solutions would benefit them the most.
The Big Question
How might we connect individuals with other people who share a similar music taste?
While there is a currently available product that allows users to share their opinions on music specifically, I wanted to find a way to help people interact with others who share a similar music taste.
User Interviews
Participants said that reviews are more trustworthy if they include pictures and/or if they come from someone they know.
After deciding on my research question, it was time to begin conducting user interviews. I ended up interviewing 5 individuals and asked them each questions about their experience with reading and leaving reviews.
Through my research, I found that all interviewees have left reviews in the past and would leave more in the future. When it comes to reviews, however, most of the interviewees said that they trust some more than others. Some things that they said make a review more trustworthy are having a picture/video attached to it, having it come from someone they know, as well as just getting a general feel for the tone of the review.
Participants don’t actively search for music reviews, but they do exchange recommendations with friends.
Another insight I uncovered through my user interviews was that the interviewees don’t actually go and search for reviews on their favorite songs and/or albums. They do, however, share and receive music recommendations with friends. The reason they do this is because their friends will typically have a good understanding of the type of music they listen to or would potentially enjoy which is line with my previous finding that people tend to trust reviews more from people they know.
User Personas
Based on the user interviews, it was time to put a face to who I am actually creating this design solution for.
I decided to create two personas based off of my findings: The Music Reviewer and The Discoverer. These are based on the insights I uncovered about my interviewees’ experience with sharing and reading reviews. I also incorporated details that reflected the findings from my interviewees’ experiences with sharing music recommendations.
Streaming Tracker
When I began brainstorming, the first idea that came to mind was an app similar to BeReal we’re users would be asked to share a song at any given point throughout the day. I decided against this idea though as it didn’t feel like a good enough way to help people share their thoughts and opinions on music or find community.
The next idea I had was an app that organizes a person’s streaming or review history into a fun and digestible dashboard. In my user interviews, I found that people tend to enjoy features like Spotify Wrapped so I felt like this could be a fun way to have users share their personal streaming habits. I didn’t choose this idea, however, as it didn’t feel very social or interactive which is something I hoped to achieve with my product.
BeReal but for music
Following my brainstorming session, I ultimately opted for the review sharing platform with a group feature to give users the ability to share reviews with a select group of users as well as read reviews from people who know their interests.
The Product’s Flow
What would the user’s journey look like when using this product?
Task Flow #1 — Filtering your feed
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Feed
Group Screen
Now that I got the key task flows identified, it was time to begin designing some low-fidelity wireframes for my product.
New Post
Album Page
Brainstorming
With my user research completed, it was time to begin brainstorming possible design solutions.
My last idea was a review sharing platform that would encourage users to share their opinions on their favorite artists and music. In order to differentiate my product from what’s out there I thought of including a groups feature to help people share reviews with specific users.
Edit Group
Filtering System
One piece of feedback I received was to fully flesh out a filtering system for the home feeds so that users can discover new music easier or hone in on certain types of reviews.
Review sharing platform
Product Requirements
With my user research completed, it was time to begin brainstorming possible design solutions.
Branding
After making a few tweaks and applying Spotify’s brand guidelines, I have finalized my designs for the listening party feature.
Task Flow #2 — Adding a user to a group
Task Flow #3 — Sharing a review
Initial Feedback
With some low-fidelity screens designed, I reached out to my mentor for feedback as well as shared them in a group critique session.
Clearer Feed
Another piece of feedback I received was that it was hard to distinguish the posts in the home feed. In order to fix this, I added a bit of space between each review card to differentiate them from others and make it easier on the user’s eyes.
High-Fi Wireframes