CURATED: WEB APP
A music discovery platform built on human curation. Users share carefully crafted playlists and immsersive music stories, celebrating the power of personal taste in an AI-driven world
Role: UX/UI Design, Branding
Duration: 8 weeks
Problem: Algorithmically driven music dsicovery leads to narrowing the users scope of genres and artists, causing people to miss out on what could be their next favorite song.
How might we make a platform for music sharing and discovery that amplifies people's ability to curate and share music that they love with others.
EMPATHY STAGE
To get a better understanding of how users discover and share new music, I conducted 5 remote user interviews with music enthusiasts and casual listeners as well. My goal was to get a sense of how people share, curate and discover music online or offline. My goal was to understand how people find new artists and curate their music taste.
I discovered through these interviews that most users trust human taste over algorithms to learn about new music. Further, most interviewees felt that a well crafted playlist can change an experience from mundane to memorable.
FigJam File (Interactive)
PERSONAS
Through the empathy stage research, I developed 2 user persona examples of my ideal users. These users are a synthesis of my interview participants but with differing motivations for needing an app like Curated. These users represent two distinct user types: Those that would curate a playlist to share and those that would use the platform for discovery only.
Figma File (Interactive)
LO-FI WIREFRAMES
After developing user flows and diagrams, making brand identify guides and creating a logo for Curated, I started the Low Fidelity wire framing stage of the UX process. I got feedback from peers and potential users for how they felt about the layout of a few options for the home page of the Dashboard
Figma File (Interactive)
HI-FI PROTOTYPE
Based on feedback I recieved from potential users and peers, I moved into refining the UI of the app. These high fidelity files were designed to focus on the main goal of the app: to facilitate the discovery of new music and give users the ability to share what they listen to.
Figma File (Interactive)
ITERATIONS
After conducting 6 user tests on my high fidelity prototype, I moved on to my iterations based on tester feedback. I made several changes, first being that it was not clear to a user that Music Stories would play as one piece of media similar to a podcast. This function is similar to an old school radio DJ hour about a particular music. I also made some updates to the labels on the discover page and profile to clear up confusion that users shared. Finally, the app navigation was simplified so that users could navigate seamlessly across pages. You can interact with the prototype below.
Figma File (Interactive)
Solution: A shared place for users to craft curated playlists and music stories to improve the experience of discovering new music. Essentially making music discovery more human.