Forte

Discovering New Music Just A Swipe Away

Type:

Bootcamp Project

Tools:

Figma, Paper, and Illustrator

Roles:

Graphic Designer, UX Designer, and UX Researcher

Timeline:

4 Weeks

Project Overview

The following is a UX project, in which my group and I worked together to create a music discovery app that would help solve the problem of people having trouble finding new music. The process to do this took several weeks in total as we conducted user research and competitor research, developed various prototypes, and finalized different elements of the project into one final iteration that we would then present to our bootcamp class. This process was not without its hurdles as we ran into issues in several places when it came to the topic of onboarding as well as making sure all of the scrolling elements of the project were able to work. That said the project was completed on time and was able to demonstrate what its purpose was.

User Research - Listening To Our Users’ Needs

We first needed to get a better understanding of how users feel about their current music sharing apps as well as find pain points we could hone in on. The finding of these interviews pointed to a problem with finding new music and how some of the only ways you could really find new music was seeing what other people are listening to. This led us to crafting our user persona and gave us an anchor to show us what we needed to focus on. Below are a set of questions that we used during the interview process along with some responses that stuck out to us from the initial user testing.

  • How often do you listen to music per week?

  • What’s your favorite song at the moment?

  • How did you discover that song?

  • How do you typically listen to music?

  • How do you discover new music?

  • What challenges do you face when searching for new music?

  • What do you like or dislike about your current music apps discoverability?

  • How long do you listen to a new song before you decide to add it to your playlist?

  • Do you research bands/artists you enjoy?

“...go on someone’s profile, and then stalk their playlists. And then one thing leads to another, like, I’ll find a song and then I’ll like, go to the artists and then I’ll see what other songs the artist has...”
“...Discover Weekly ends up recycling a lot of songs that I already like... become very niche in regards to genre”

The culmination of our user research, our user persona

Definition & Synthesis - Tuning Our Goals

When it came to understanding what is important for music discovery, one of the biggest misconceptions we had was that there was only one reason someone would have issues with finding new music. That the algorithm was not working for them, but that is not the case. As it can be seen below there are more factors to solving this problem and it is with these factors that shaped what we would do next.

Storyboard used to help understand to our potential user and how why they would want to use Forte

Ideation - Finding Our Tempo and Direction

Realizing we needed to focus on finding a way of creating an app that could address pain points of users and make finding new music exciting and fresh, we set our sights on creating a user experience for Forte that would be simple, easy-to-use, and enjoyable.

Prototyping (Lo-Fi)

When it came to the topic of prototyping and initial designs for Forte, one element that did not change much was the design of the main screen that the user would interact with. We knew early on that the main focus of the screen needs to be the music whether that is an album cover or an image that was used to represent the artist and that along with that we wanted to have the two main interactions on the screen to be a like/dislike or yes/no option to avoid confusion. While this might have been the first screen what we thought we did build the app up around it. We realized that we needed to give people the option to personalize their taste in music both during the onboarding process as well as afterwards. The thoughts of what we needed to put into the onboarding process then grew from there as we had to figure out what information that we thought was needed from the users and what was not really that required from them.

User Testing + Outcomes

As user testing began with the prototype, we received praise for how well the app looked but that information needed to be better conveyed to the user. These critiques were taken to heart and helped shape the further interactions after this first one as seen by us added a more in depth tutorial as well as improving visual signposting and hierarchy. 

Conclusion + Future Opportunities

In the end, through the hard work and dedication of our team we were able to fine tune our prototype into something that can change the way we discover new music. That said there is still room for Forte to grow. One big feature that we all thought would help this app would be the ability to have Forte be able to promote up-and-coming artists as well as find more ways to personalize your Forte through more options and algorithms that could potentially support an app like this.

Ultimately through the clear visual hierarchy and consistent language, we were able to create a prototype that we are proud of.