House Music
My Role
- UX design
- UI design
About
Fine Day Studio project
Summary
Born out of the need to continue engaging kids and teenagers with support needs during COVID lockdown, House Music is a low-cost, accessible and cross-platform web-app that let's young people make music together - from wherever they are.
My role
In close collaboration with Soundplay a first draft prototype was developed to test the concept and apply for further funding. I joined Fine Day half way through the project and took over the lead to finalise and ship the app.
My responsibilities included planning & conducting usability tests, streamlining the user flow, fine-tune the interface design and guide the devolpement team through the final steps to launch the product.
Research
As the first prototype was developed before I joined the team I started with an in-depth analysis of the brief and the first version of the app. The target audience was already clearly defined so I was able to jump right into the iteration phase of the existing prototype.
Internal testing
The first run through of the prototype showed some minor changes that could be implemented quickly ahead of prepping the app for the first usability testing session.
User flow
Before we started developing scenarios for usability testing sessions with the target audience, an user flow was created to establish the ideal scenario and highlight key descision making points.
Usability testing
My main focus in this project was to run a series of usability tests in order to eridacate as many usability issues as possible before launching the product.
Testing sessions
- 8 Participants
The first usability test was the most in depth session as we needed to get a good grasp of how easy to understand and use the app at it's current state was. We foccused on the main user flow, and had 3 scenarios with 3-4 tasks each for the user to complete. The second and third testing sessions focussed on the implemented updates and helped to refine the new features. A short general questionnaire was handed out before each test to get a better understanding of the participants background and a set of follow-up questions were prepared as well.
Design iterations
Onboarding - Before usability test
The user tests uncovered some functional and usability issues in the onboarding sequence. The house name screen was confusing to some users, the input fields had some functional problems with disappearing fields and the tutorial on the bottom of the screen was disconnected from the content.
Onboarding - After usability test
The house name screen was unclear and has been removed to reduce decision fatigue early on. Input field and button states have been adjusted and the overall button hierarchy has been improved. The tutorials have been removed and replaced with description directly connected to the interactive elements.
Menu & Mute
Users weren't able to change their names and couldn't see who is currently making music with them. A separate menu was added to give access to those functions.
The mute function was confusing to many, as it disabled all sounds and had to be manually deacitvated. The users expected a clear function but not a mute. The initial mute button was removed and a clear function added to the menu.
Instruments
The overall appearance of the instruments has been changed and made more enganging by representing the actual object rather than just being squares. The active states of the button was also adjusted and the mute button was replaced with access to the menu.
Final outcome
After multiple rounds of usability testing and design iterations the House Music web app was launched in October '22.
