MusiCon
An social media platform for musicians.
About the Project
MusiCon is a professional social media platform designed specifically for musicians to showcase their work, discover new job opportunities, and build meaningful connections with other professionals in the industry.
My role
UX/UI designer
Skills:
UX Research
Wireframing
Prototyping
Visual Design
Usability Testing
Tools
Figma
Miro
Balsamiq
MarvelPoP
Design Process
Understand
Background:
The life and career of a musician can be incredibly challenging. The reality is that the pay is often inadequate, and the industry can be fiercely competitive. Despite having talent, it can feel nearly impossible to succeed in the industry.
Today, the unemployment rate among musicians in the US is currently at a staggering 13.5%. This high rate of unemployment, coupled with a lack of consistent income, has made it challenging for musicians to sustain long-term careers. Furthermore, the median annual salary for musicians falls below that of the average worker. This combination of factors has forced many talented individuals to abandon their music dreams and seek other career paths. Musicians not only struggle to find work but also face challenges in finding fulfillment and making a sustainable living in a field they are deeply passionate about.
Problem Statement:
Currently, there is no single platform that caters to all the needs of musicians, including showcasing their music, building personal branding, networking with other musicians, and searching for music-related job opportunities. As a result, musicians are forced to use multiple tools that often fall short of their career needs.
Hypothesis:
MusiCon is a specialized job board and music-resume platform designed to empower musicians in their career pursuits. It serves as a comprehensive solution that fulfills all the essential requirements for musicians, including the promotion of music works, showcasing their skill set, exploring job opportunities, and fostering meaningful connections within the industry.
Competitive Analysis
I have chosen LinkedIn, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp for my competitive analysis. These companies compete with MusiCon in terms of directives, design, features, and target audiences. By conducting a SWOT analysis, I identified how various platforms assist musicians in promoting their careers and consequently identified potential opportunities for MusiCon. These opportunities will be highlighted on the page.
Competitive Analysis Conclusion
Out of the three companies analyzed, SoundCloud is the most similar to MusiCon and offers the best range of features for musicians, especially in terms of uploading and sharing music to showcase their key skill set. However, it doesn't display a musician's comprehensive body of work or resume, nor does it have a job board for musicians.
On the other hand, LinkedIn offers extensive features for professionals to find jobs and connect with each other, but it was not designed specifically for musicians. As a result, LinkedIn doesn't accommodate for the needs of musicians, including uploading music or highlighting performances, or even finding other musicians easily.
Opportunity for MusiCon
MusiCon has a unique opportunity in the market as there is currently no direct competitor offering a comprehensive solution for musicians to showcase their music, create online resumes, and access job opportunities in the industry. While platforms like LinkedIn, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud provide some necessary features, MusiCon can fill the gap by specifically focusing on musicians' career development. MusiCon can capitalize on LinkedIn's lack of emphasis on musicians and SoundCloud's limited support for career advancement.
This positioning sets MusiCon apart and presents a significant opportunity.
User Research
Demographic:
Young musicians under 40, living in urban and suburban areas, lack suitable platforms to showcase and promote their work online. They face challenges in finding job opportunities and may be unfamiliar with digital marketing strategies.
Research Conclusion:
The results from both surveys and interviews confirm that musicians have a strong desire to secure jobs. These findings also validate that the current social media platforms they utilize are not effectively supporting their career development.
Affinity Map
Following the interviews, an affinity map was created to consolidate the key points and themes discussed. This facilitated the synthesis of insights, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of musicians' perspectives on various aspects such as job search, online career promotion, and building connections with fellow musicians. The affinity map serves as a visual representation of the gathered insights, enabling the identification of common patterns and unique perspectives within the data.
Unorganized affinity map
The process of arranging affinity map
After several reorganization, a final Affinity Map based on different themes is shown above.
Empathy
Persona:
Based on the user research and synthesis of interviews, I created two personas: Amy and Young. Both are musicians but have distinct career foci. Amy aspires to be a respected pianist and desires to have her music heard and seen by a wider audience. She is looking for a way to effectively promote her music online and build meaningful connections with her audience. Young, on the other hand, is seeking full-time teaching positions at universities. He needs a platform where he can showcase his diverse skill set and easily search for music-related job opportunities. These personas provide valuable insights for developing MusiCon to meet the diverse needs of musicians.
Empathy Map
To gain deeper insights into the users' experiences, empathy maps were created to organize the data on what users say, feel, think, and do. Alongside the personas, these empathy maps provide valuable tools for understanding the users' perspectives, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. By considering these aspects, the development of MusiCon can be tailored to meet the specific needs and desires of the users, enhancing their overall experience with the platform.
Define
User flow
User flows illustrate the key tasks for MusiCon's personas, highlighting the steps users need to take to accomplish their goals. Each user flow is linked to a user story, outlining the necessary actions for goal completion. Here are a few examples of user flows for MusiCon.
Information Architecture
Ideate
The following sketches show the initial design of the key screens from user flows.
Prototype
Lo-Fi Wireframes and Prototype
While sketches helped generate ideas and initial design concepts, low-fidelity wireframes provide more precise representations of the app screens. These wireframes have undergone multiple iterations to refine the content placement and layout. The following are some of the key wireframes that have been created:
User story 1: As a user, I would like to search for a musician and check out the profile page.
The musician's profile page serves as an online resume, effectively demonstrating their wide range of skills and expertise.
User Story 2: As a user, I would like to upload my audio to showcase my skills.
"Music Career Tips" articles offer musicians advice on music promotion and marketing skills. The "Music Category" and "Public Feed" features enable easy music discovery, while "Musicians Near Me" and "Suggested Musicians" provide quick connections to suitable musical collaborator.
With the inclusion of filters, users can swiftly and efficiently find the specific musician they are searching for.
On the search results page, users can effortlessly listen to the music and follow the musician with the inclusion of convenient "play" and "add" buttons.
While listening to a musician's music, users have the ability to read the description of the music, comment on it, save it, share it, and "like" it. Furthermore, users can follow the musician directly from the audio page.
Musicians can easily add content to different sections on their profile page, effectively showcasing their skills.
When uploading an audio file, musicians have the option to include additional information about the audio, providing more context and details for listeners.
User Story 3: As a user, I want to search for music jobs.
Job boards enable users to search and discover new job listings quickly, while also providing personalized job recommendations based on their profile.
Research results include essential information such as the job titles, company's name, location, and the time of posting.
The job description provides comprehensive details about the job position, including information on salary, location, requirements, and any applicable deadlines.
Usability Test
Before proceeding to the high-fidelity design phase, I conducted a usability test with four participants to evaluate the current design. The prototype was created using Figma, and users were given four tasks to complete, as indicated on the right side. The objective was to assess users' impressions of the key screens, identify any challenges encountered during task completion, and gather feedback on potential improvements for the main screens and critical user paths based on participants' behavior and reactions.
Usability test summary
All participants completed the tasks.
They unanimously expressed that the app was user-friendly, featuring clear and intuitive screen designs.
Three out of four participants specifically emphasized the value of the profile page, recognizing how it significantly facilitated their understanding of a musician's skills.
While conducting the test, a few issues were identified, which have been addressed below.
The participants' valuable feedback has guided important improvements to be implemented.
Usability Test continued
Final mockups of the major screens of the application are included below
For more, please check out my clickable Figma prototype:
What did I learn about the design process?
Throughout the design process, I have gained invaluable insights and experiences. One of the most significant lessons I have learned is that design is a collaborative endeavor, not a solitary one. User interviews and usability testing have provided me with valuable feedback and insights that have greatly enhanced my design. These interactions have sparked new ideas and approaches that I may not have considered on my own. For instance, during a usability test, a user suggested adding additional filters for searching musicians, such as "distance," "view counts," and "rating." This suggestion proved to be a fantastic idea that had not occurred to me. I have always been fascinated by how people perceive things differently, and being open to feedback has allowed me to gather more data, eliminate confusion, and address weaknesses before finalizing the product.
Another important lesson I have learned is the value of iteration. Designing a great product is not a one-time activity; it requires being open to making changes and adjustments as needed. Throughout the development of MusiCon, I embraced multiple iterations, continuously refining user flows, sketches, wireframes, and more. These iterations played a pivotal role in achieving a significantly improved end product. I discovered that iteration and collaboration go hand in hand. Receiving feedback is essential for iteratively refining my design work for MusiCon. This realization has changed my understanding of the design process. Previously, I believed that the design process followed a linear progression of steps. However, I now understand that the design process is not always linear. To create better products, it is sometimes necessary to revisit previous steps, redesign, or make changes. During the design process of MusiCon, I found myself going back and forth between steps in order to refine the design, add or modify elements, and ultimately create a better product.
What did I learn about the product/industry?
In the expansive music industry, which encompasses an estimated 2 million musicians in the US alone, a significant majority of them being freelancers, the existing products primarily focus on music sharing and audio streaming rather than catering to musicians' career development needs.
As a musician myself, I have personally experienced the struggles of finding employment after graduation, and I have witnessed similar challenges faced by my friends and colleagues. Through surveys and interviews conducted with fellow musicians, it became evident that many share the difficulty of securing suitable jobs and finding platforms to promote their work for future opportunities. The findings highlight the urgent demand for comprehensive solutions that address the career and promotional needs of musicians.
Therefore, the introduction of a product that squarely focuses on advancing musicians' careers not only fills a significant void in the market, presenting profitable opportunities for companies, but also addresses the pressing need for musicians to overcome the difficulties they face in promoting their careers effectively. By offering dedicated features and resources tailored to musicians' career development, such a product can empower musicians to navigate the industry and unlock new opportunities for success.
What's the future of this product?
In addition to the core MVP features, there are several other interesting features worth considering for MusiCon. For instance:
IIntegrating online meeting functionality would enable students to have virtual music lessons, facilitate musicians playing together, and provide a platform for general meetings without the need to rely on external video conferencing apps like Zoom or phone calls. This expansion of teaching capabilities would enhance teachers' income by allowing them to reach students from different locations and make collaboration more convenient for musicians.
Including an online calendar feature would streamline the scheduling process for musicians, enabling them to list their available time slots for lessons, job interviews, and other engagements. This feature simplifies scheduling by eliminating the need for multiple emails and allows students, employers, or other users to book time directly through the platform.
Musicians could have their own music store within MusiCon, where they can sell their audio tracks and other music-related merchandise. This feature allows musicians to not only promote their careers but also generate revenue from their music and merchandise sales.
If musicians have upcoming performances, in addition to displaying the time and date on their profile page as currently designed, they could also sell tickets directly through MusiCon to the audience. This feature streamlines the ticketing process, providing a convenient solution for both musicians and their audience.