THE Problem
Guitar Center has succeeded in developing an e-commerce site but doesn't have a place online that would help increase engagement (other than commerce). While Guitar Center has a slew of other services like online lessons and music publishing, they don't have a platform which helps draw users into these services.
The Solution
We believe creating a place for musicians to connect and collaborate online would satisfy the desire musicians have to find new people to jam and form bands while while helping to create the desire in users to take online lessons and publish the music they are creating.
Details
Team
I worked with Polly Zebrowski & Danielle Akilah for 2 weeks.
Tools used
- Pencil/whiteboard sketches
- Omnigraffle
- Sketch
- InVision
Role
Interviews, Task Analysis, scope, user flow, IA, sketching, visual design.
It all starts with the user
We sent surveys to find interview participants who were active musicians and have considered trying to jam with new people or start a band (while simultaneously gathering demographic data). We then conducted extended interviews with relevant users to form the habits, attitudes and pain points of our personas.
Personas
Equipped with an understanding of what was most important to our users when they were looking to connect with new musicians online, we collated the most common attributes of our users and described the pain points we felt we could address.
Task Analysis
After getting a grasp of who are potential users are, we assumed the role of a Sam – a musician who has just moved to a new city and wants to find a jazz guitarist to jam with - to analyze the tasks and steps she would take on existing services.
Competitors visualized
After using a slew of competitor sites, we first noted the structure and purpose of each and then collated the most relevant features into a comparative chart.
Scope: MVP
Once we understood how our users were trying to meet new musicians, we made a concept model to illustrate the features a Minimum Viable Product would need for our users to find a new person to jam with, contact them, and schedule a time to jam.
User Flows
With our minimum viable product in mind, we made an illustration of the primary and secondary flow a user is likely to take on our site.
Information ARCHITECTURE
Next we outlined our potential IA visually by creating a rough sitemap to act as a guide for all of the static screens we wanted to create for our prototype.
“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
Sketching
My role was to test my concepts for our sign up process, messaging, sharing, and calendar features (but all 3 below are my sketches). We wanted our sign up process to be as simple and easy as possible while getting enough information into the site to make it useful.
Digitized Prototype
While paper prototyping is helpful to validate the higher level concepts of your solution, there is no substitute to a high fidelity animated mock up to give a user a taste of what the final product will look like. Sample screens at the top and my interactive prototype bellow.