Discus is a social media platform that allows users to freely express opinions about music in the form of ratings and reviews. User can create conversations about your all-time favorite albums, and join in on your friends' discussions in a place where music is loved by everyone.
UX Research
Product Design
Branding
Mobile UX/UI
Interaction design
Myself
Figma
Miro
Adobe Indesign
4 months
October 2021-February 2022
With what seems to be a world filled with different kinds of social media platforms, there isn’t one that captures the music community appropriately. My design challenge was to create a place for people to share their thoughts and opinions of music in a quick and easy way.
Starting from scratch, I implemented both generative and evaluative research methods to familiarize myself with the problem through secondary research and interviews, while constructing and improving the experience through guerilla and usability testing.
To kick the project off, I decided to use secondary research and user interviews to get foundational information. I sent out a screener survey to various online communities who had members that enjoyed listening to music. I received about 25 responses and was able to select five participants to interview. Areas to focus include:
I started distilling the information I gathered with affinity maps, empathy maps and personas. Each of these tools allowed me to carefully narrow down who I would be designing this product for and what needs would be addressed.
I took the information I had gathered and started grouping them into similar categories. These were snippets of real conversations with people, so I knew this would be an integral part of my design process.
Using the new categories I had created, I noticed that there were two kinds of users. Using empathy maps, I narrowed down my research to find users who value the opinions of their friends vs. users who value numbers and data. I now had to keep track of two different users' needs within a single product.
Personifying my research allowed me the opportunity to visualize actual people who would use my product. Since I had two empathy maps, I made two personas so that all of the data collected would not go to waste. These personas helped me make more conscious human-centered design decisions when the time came.
After I had synthesized my research, I figured creating a platform where users can interact with each other was the best fit for my users' needs. I created a few HMW statements that would allow me to cater to each of these personas needs within a single product.
These how might we statements aim to fulfil both users' needs.
1.
Help people create relationships through music discussions.
2.
Eliminate unnecessary time spent creating a rating/review.
3.
Provide users with a streamlined way of expressing their opinions on music.
4.
Show new music to users without them having to search for it.
Before I could start coming up with ideas and sketching my initial thoughts, I had to confirm my end-to-end essential user tasks that would validate my research and HMW statements.
I created a few rounds of sketches and finally ended on some that I was happy with. I wanted to focus on the user’s ability to find music and create reviews. If I wanted users to talk about music, I had to make the music easily accessible. Using quick sketches continued to help me solve the initial problem.
To make sure I was on the right track early in the design process, I asked five people to do some quick tests with my sketch prototype, asking each user to complete my critical design paths that I identified earlier. I learned that most people expected an option to create a review from the homepage. As I moved on to my wireframes, I made sure to keep this in mind.
Based on prior feedback, I made sure to include a way for the user to create a review from the homepage. With that in mind, I decided to keep the original way of creating a review from the album page to allow flexibility and keep the user in control.
I made this mood board to inspire the visual design of my product.
The name of the game is discussion. No flashy graphics, nothing that would distract users from each other. I needed something that would almost be secondary to users' thoughts, but also invite them to a clean, polished platform.
I ended up with a bluish-green color for a fresh, calm look, along with a bright orange for highlighted or specific elements that need to stand out. This simple color scheme with the unassuming “Inter” typeface all worked toward making users' words stand out, as well as compliment the various kinds of album art that will appear.
Originally, I had made the review button on the homepage a floating button that would be stationary as you scrolled. As I kept tweaking the design, I realized that since reviewing is one of the key components of the app, I added the review button to the bottom navigation bar. This way, the user can navigate to leave a review from anywhere in the app.
Before (left) and after (right) the addition of a review button on the nav bar.
My first prototype included all 4 critical paths necessary for Discus to solve the original problem. It was now time to see if I had come close to the solution with unbiased usability testing.
Usability round 1
Usability round 2
My usability testing showed Discus' interface resonated with my interviewees. By the second round, users were having little to no difficulty completing the tasks I asked them to perform. Thanks to user testing, these final designs create the conversational environment that users were looking for during my research.
By the end of this project, I was able to design Discus as a social media platform that addresses the music community comprehensively. Users' can successfully create reviews to articulate how they feel about music, interact with others who do the same, and build a network of music-loving individuals.
The design process can be messy at times. This project taught me valuable lessons as a designer. For example, I may think I am making an informed design decision, but I must absolutely have affirming user research to back up that decision. Not all users think like myself! Each change I made had to be justified and work in favor of the user. Little changes, like the commenting process, can add up in the end to either make or break a design. Despite working quickly and learning along the way, I made sure to justify my design decisions at every step.
In order for this product to be considered successful, I would plan on tracking member metrics to see how many users are downloading the app and how long they have it active. In terms of monetization, ads are a fairly easy way of making money off a platform. I would also consider adding a paid version of the app that would remove ads and maybe grant the user special features.
If I had more time, I would love to look into a feature that lets the user connect music streaming services to their account. Initially, this seems like a great way to find new music and actually listen to it, as opposed to just taking someone's word for it. Another idea could be implementing a messaging feature so you could send song links to others. Again, I could dig more time into this project, these features would definitely be worth researching.
