UXDI P1 Assignment: A Retrospective Report on “Indigo” Mobile App UX Design

in·di·go

ˈindəˌɡō/
noun

1. a tropical plant of the pea family, which was formerly widely cultivated as a source of dark blue dye.
2. the dark blue dye obtained from the indigo plant.
3. the music app designed with your moods in mind

Hello! My name is Amanda. Thanks for peeking at my page! I’m a student in the User Experience Design Immersive course at General Assembly, and I’ve just completed my first assignment — to create a mobile application that is somehow connected to music.

1. “Let’s talk…” —Conducting User Interviews

As the ideal music app can be interpreted in a number of ways to different people, I first needed to challenge this ambiguity.

To begin my app design process, I discussed with 8 individuals what initially comes to mind when thinking about what a new music app could offer. This is how I decided the way in which I’d guide my user interviews. From there, I conducted 4 user interviews (with 2 of these users + 2 additional users) about their general experiences with music and how they interact with it.

Some initial questions I asked were:

• “What is your relationship with music?”
• “How does music intrigue you?”
• “How do you listen to music?”
• “How do you decide what to listen to?”

I used these high-level questions to inform the rest of the interview, fostering more of a conversation rather than a Q&A. This was important because I didn’t want to make the interview seem like a troublesome task for the user. Through these user “conversations,” the below key learnings were uncovered:

User Behaviors:

• Likes to explore new activities
• Discovering new music

User Goals:

• Discover new music that they actually like
• Listen to music that matches their mood

User Needs:

• An app that provides listening options based on users’ moods.
• Song options that note only fit users’ moods but also that are tailored to their individual tastes.

2. “What’s your issue?” — Synthesizing the Data and Identifying the Problem

To identify a common problem among my users, I wrote key learnings on post-it notes and organized them in categories to create what’s called an affinity map — see below:

By synthesizing and analyzing my data, I was able to determine that the two common threads in my interviews surrounded 1.) moods and 2.) playlists.

My findings exposed that different types of music makes users feel a certain way, and that this has quite a significant impact on what they decide to listen to. For example, one user noted “If I’m feeling sad, I want to listen to happy music. If you’re in a bad mood and you listen to one of your favorite songs, you can become happier.” Another user said “I think a mood-based song app would be really interesting. Songs you know you like but they fit your mood, as well. And suggestion-based like ‘I like this artist’ so play another song like that. And give recommendations.”

But…what does “happy music” mean exactly? This was another matter in question.

By using user interview techniques such as Active Listening and Silence, users felt comfortable enough to organically express the following key insights:

• The playlists users usually listen to are produced based on genre rather than mood. This prevents users from listening to music that more accurately matches their feelings.
• The “mood” playlists that are available, such as the ones provided on Spotify, don’t always reflect the listener’s taste; e.g., a “Good Vibes” playlist can mean R&B and Neo-Soul to one person, or it can mean Indie and Alternative Rock to another person.

To summarize, these “Mood Listeners” decide what music to listen to based on their mood, but the playlists that they have access to are usually only based on genre or artists. Knowing these insights, the persona, and the goal, I developed the following problem statement which informed the ideation for my app design:

How might we deliver an app that provides “Mood Listeners” an effective way to listen to a playlist that both matches their mood AND fits their specific tastes?

3. “Help!” — Designing a Solution (Ideation/Iteration)

In order to address the above problem statement, I designed a mobile application with the intent to give my users a better user experience…

Enter:

INDIGO

— An app that allows Mood Listeners to listen to playlists based on their mood, made up of songs that fit their musical preferences.
— In addition to accessing standard playlists such as “Coffeehouse” and “Turn Up,” of course matched to suit individual musical preferences, users will also have the option to customize playlists for moods personal to them.

Below is the initial paper prototype I started with:

My original user goals were to 1.) choose artists that fit the Bossa Nova and Smooth Jazz subgenres under Jazz, and 2.) connect that music to a mood of theirs. This was a problem because artists, songs, and genres can be applied to more than one mood; this made the task too convoluted and it became confusing to use the app. I also received additional feedback on the app design in general:

• Include username/password on the home screen so it shows you’re logged in. (The original task scenario had them already logged in, but nothing actually showed this.)
• Add “Create playlists”-type ETA to keyboard screen
• Have the ability to select multiple subgenres at a time, and separate each artist by subgenre
• Make screen dividers for sections to more clearly show what you’re doing in the user flow

After doing using testing on this paper prototype with 3 users total, I iterated my sketches and and revised the task scenario and user goal:

Task Scenario:
You like to listen to your music based on what kind of mood you’re in, but you can’t find so you’ve downloaded Indigo and just opened it up for the first time.

User Goal(s):
You want to create an account and create your first mood playlist.

Here is some more iteration on the user flow and the User Interface design (with some Marvel feedback notes which were recorded later):

After much iteration, the following modified, clean paper prototype was used to translate my ideas into reality via the app design tool Marvel.

4. “How does it work?” — Low-Fidelity Prototype

You can see the low-fidelity Marvel prototype of Indigo within the interactive demo below. Try it out!

5. “So…what’s next?” — Key Learnings and Next Steps

After testing this low-fidelity prototype in Marvel with 4 users, I received the following feedback:

• 4 out of 4 users were able to understand the task scenario and complete the task/accomplish user goals.
• 4 out of 4 users confirmed that the app is “straightforward” and “the flow is great.”
• Put the status indicator circles at the top, down on the bottom near the CTAs for easier comprehension and to look less cluttered.
• Add Edit button when naming (“setting”) your new mood.
• Add a “Suggestion” feature so users can get music recommendations based on their listening history.
• Replace “Login via Twitter” with “Login via Google+”

After gathering this user feedback of my low-fidelity prototype, here are the next steps I would take to implement Indigo as a real, usable app available in app stores:

1. Update low-fidelity prototype with these suggestions if they seem fit
2. Flesh out other known functions of the app
3. Discover new functions and features that can be added without overcomplicating and avoiding featuritis
4. Iterate, iterate, iterate!
5. Test, test, test!
6. Apply key learnings from testing and develop a mid-fidelity prototype with expansion of functionality
7. Iterate and conduct user testing again.
8. Apply key learnings from testing and develop a high-fidelity prototype, enabling all the ins and outs of the app, from Creating and Managing Moods to Account Settings.
9. Test with users to be sure I’m not missing anything, and iterate on just what’s needed (because high-fidelity prototypes can be expen$ive!)
10. Develop a business plan, a marketing roll-out plan, and potential future features/functions/business partnerships.