Discovering Musi
Today, we have more choices than ever when it comes to apps that help solve our problems and address our needs. Some as simple as; Where can I find some good food or What should I listen to today. These problems were some of the low hanging fruit that hundreds of companies and developers tackled to deliver such apps as Yelp, for discovering great places to eat, and Pandora for discovering great music.
As part of the GA’s assignment to discover a new app, naturally, as an iPhone owner I turned to Apple’s App Store. I am always looking to discover new music so I figured I’d type in “Music” to see what the market place serves up. Interestingly enough, in spot #1 of the results was an unfamiliar app called “Musi” with nearly 20k reviews (and mostly positive reviews) I figured I’d give it a go.
Splash / Welcome Screen
Nice. Feels Pro. I’m feeling good already…
Remember, I found this app by accident so I am extremely untrusting of the new app and value my Device’s space which disappears way too fast.
Sidebar: A quote note about me — I’m a compulsive app downloader and experimenter. I’ve deleted more apps than are installed on my phone by far. If an app escapes the monthly purge/delete process it is doing something right.
Home Screen
“Welcome To Musi” plus some helper text…
Text says: Begin by tapping the search button, then add some songs to your library.
Thoughts: Don’t make me read (Google Also: “Don’t make me think”). From other onboarding experiences I could tell you this could be accomplished through the use of animations, an onboarding activity, or self-guided tour… (definitely room for improvement).
Search Screen
Is that a “double click ad”?
ALSO, I’m noticing the Ads everywhere. Is this app “for real” or created to generate ad-revenue. Ugh. Let’s continue to discover if there the ultimate question: Does app provide utility for me?!
Already, I am forming feelings about the app’s maturity and level of refinement. Judgement is setting in fast. I’m starting to judge the app in an unforgiving way ALREADY and I’m only 2 minutes in… “Am I being too critical, too early”, I wonder.
No, this is an important lesson — Understanding how judgmental I am is likely transferable to the way others behave and think when trying out a new experience or app. I hope to remember this when designing apps myself. We (modern app users) don’t give digital experiences second chances before throwing down the gauntlet (i.e., deletion).
Quick Impressions: Not bad. I see recommended search categories and Featured Playlists… this app might not be half bad. Part of me feels like this is A LOT to show but I also can easily ignore this if I have an artist or song in mind to search on.
Performing a search: I do have an artist in mind — Bonobo — let’s type it in. How do you spell it again, Bonno…?, Bonoo..?… my memory (and spelling) can be terrible sometimes, but that’s okay, my good friend autocomplete will surely rescue me, right?! NOPE!
Autocomplete missing
Search Autocomplete/auto-fill is missing. That wonderful feature, that Google has largely made popular and ubiquitous across search experiences, allowing users to type in a few letters and instantly start to see results.
No autocomplete — no problem — this is not a make or break, but it’s funny how much I have come to expect it. After I remembered how to spell Bonobo, and I submitted my query. Let’s take a look at the search results.
Search Results
Great. I recognized the album art, and it appears to have returned relevant results — from what I can see so far. I count nearly 3 songs visible on my iPhone5’s screen. The keyboard is getting in the way. If I can close the keyboard, I’ll see more… How do I do that? I think Done might do it — bingo!
Now, let’s deep dive into what I can do from the search results page.
Interacting with Search Results
Tapping in middle of result/item DOES NOTHING (minus points). How about tapping the [+] Icons or [Play] Icons?
Tapping the [+] icon: Nice feedback to confirm my action, icon toggles to [Check] icon and triggers a screen overlay.
Let’s tap the [Check] Icon to test if the expected toggle behavior happens. Nope! Issue! (minus points) no way to un-check the [check] UI. I would expect that tapping the Check UI would revert the icon to [+] and show a “Song Removed” overlay alert/confirmation… Let’s move along.
Back to Main Search
Click BACK to main search screen
See Circle Choices that can scroll left to right.
I Like (+ points) that the Popular-Category circle is half-cut off the screen… this lets me know I can scroll but a mini scroll UI wouldn’t hurt (although I know persistently visible scroll bars are not typical for iOS experiences — Apple Human Design convention).
Let’s select the Category: Electronic on the search page
Search Results Page
Above you’re seeing the results of selecting the Electronic category.
Goal: I would like to try to select 3 songs and them to My Library.
I go ahead and select [+] on 3 items. Seems to work just fine. In the process, I discover a “Import All” button and am curious about its function.
Sidebar: I was on a mission to add songs to library, then find the library, but got distracted — This could be typical of how users discover features and move through an app? (Future Project: Understand how users explore apps on their own — are there rules here, are some behaviors typical, does everyone have their own unique path to discovery?).
Testing Import All feature:
I go ahead and try it out. And it requires a second selection to confirm my choice — not a terrible idea.
It even provides some Feedback letting me know the operation was successful with an overlay style alert. (see above)
Issue: Okay, Songs Imported — NOW What?!
The confirmation alerts were nice, BUT what the heck do I do now? Where is “My Library”? Adding songs all day is nice but the goal here is to get to the library and start listening, right?
Suggestion: Why not offer a Show My Library shortcut/link? Would be nice if the app offered a jump link to take me there…
Goal: Finding My Library and learning app navigation
Task: Find the “My Library” area.
Before navigating away from the page, I take one last glance around and see that the “Import All” button still reads “Import All”… this shakes my confidence. “Did it register I wonder? Maybe I should try again?” I try the process again, same results. Okay, looks like “the app isn’t very smart” and doesn’t update button states text and/or functionality after certain actions are taken… noted.
Sidebar: Interesting how every little microinteraction is a chance for +/- points. You can lose them very quickly, so pay attention DEVs, UX Pros, Designers, and Business!
Finding Library
I guess I’ll click BACK to find it (where’s that burger button?)
Search Screen
Okay, I’m back to search results… and it’s a little unclear on how to Get to Navigation. I use apps a lot so I know I should probably click DONE to escape from the search box (the cursor + keyboard were active).
Click Burger button, navigate to Library.
“My Library” shows 0 songs but shows album art, and album art is rotating… so something must be working correctly… let’s explore the My Library — — (I wonder if this will be different from the list that was previously shown).
YES, It is in fact the same listing… Now What is that funky ‘M’ at the top with the drop-down UI?? Maybe that has even more options and places to go?
“M” Menu
Yes, it has more options but nothing appears to be critical… backup, sleep timer, FAQ…. I don’t see anything I would consider a main area/page within this menu so I’ll probably ignore it going forward.
Goal: Get a song to play
Looking at the list of songs in My Library, I will select the 1st song listing “Cruel” featuring Zayn.
A full screen Player View takes over my screen with Album Art / YouTube video pane. Nice. Looks easy! (+ points!) Let’s look closer at this screen. I can minimize the UI by clicking the caret-icon (and it even accepts swipe-down gestures — intuitive!).
Player controls look fairly standard (previous/pause/next…) but what’s that 2nd row of icons (shown in red below)?
Sometimes, if done correctly, when I see extra buttons like this I get excited about additional power-user style functionality. Let’s take a closer look to see if those extra buttons can live up to my expectations.
Exploring the Extra Buttons
Explore the EQ:
Cool! Oh wait… is it? Looks cool at first. What is this preselected/default EQ preset? No bass, random zig-zag? Where is Reset? Is this enabled? Okay — this EQ feature, not so great. On to the next one.
Player Settings
Power User settings with some tool tips at the bottom shown in grey text. Talks about Seeing Streaming settings (but does not DEEP LINK to the settings…) if these are related, I wonder why they are NOT just on the same page?
Next feature: UP Next / Que
Good feature, UI was helpful (Spotify has this).
Next feature: Mic Icon — no idea quite yet what it will do.
Oh, cool, Lyrics. Nice feature but I had no idea what it would be based on UI icon selection. Also Showing “Error” when Lyrics are not available could be refined. Better feedback around feedback text for user needed.
Thoughts on Extra Player buttons
The player control UI seems a bit cluttered and not in a good way. The extra buttons — beyond play/pause/next — seem unnecessary for everyday use.
The book Microinteractions: Designing with Details make an excellent point about this, and I quote:
Microinteractions that most people do, most often, should be highly discoverable.
Microinteractions that some people do, somewhat often, should be easily discoverable.
Microinteractions that few people do, infrequently, should take some searching for.
— Microinteractions: Designing with Details. Page 30To the book’s point, I would recommend tucking away the extra buttons under a […] / “more” button (or similar treatment).
Thoughts on Player UI consistency
Looking back at the player UI I started studying the orange and grey colors used. Looks nice on the surface but I think there are some consistency issues.
Orange appears to tells me that items are selected / ON, right? When I turn Shuffle-mode ON, the Shuffle icon turns from Grey to Orange. So if Orange means ON/Enabled, why are the previous/pause/next buttons Orange? I guess to make them look pretty? I think they need some help with consistency.
Final Task: Explore finish navigating
Use Burger UI button to get to Remove Ads area.
Okay, I see that I can pay some extra money to remove adds, nice, now get me out of here! How do I get back? I’m looking in the upper left corner where I saw BACK earlier… not there? I guess I’ll click the Center Menu button to back-track my way out… Whew, what worked. But was frustrating (#navigationFail (-) points).
Conclusion
I came into the app with the curiosity and a ton of doubt. A random app that I found on my own riddled with Ads — probably getting deleted immediately I thought. To my delight, the app is actually addresses a need:
“How do I play YouTube music on my phone and let it play in the background so I can listen to music while multitasking?”
After exploring a few of the App Store reviews, it appears many other users are enjoying the same utility from the app which is providing enough of reason for the many downloads and 4/5 star ratings.
Closing thoughts
How does a clunky app that is full of ads, get 20k reviews and thousands of downloads?
By providing just enough utility — that’s how.
Here’s my theory: there appear to be enough users out there with the same issue I’ve been having and find that the app provides adequate utility despite its shortcomings. Some apps do not need the best experience in the world. If they offer new utility, or enough utility, users will deal with the shortcomings. Sometimes “good enough” is good enough. Better to get your app out there TODAY, in MVP, rather than 1 year later in a supposedly perfect state. You’ll likely discover that “perfect” was perfect for you and probably not your user base (see: Done is better than perfect).
