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Introduction
Muse is a mobile app prototype that our team designed to help songwriters overcome writer's block. Several tools and forms of inspiration are integrated into the prototype that would help songwriters through hurdles during their songwriting process.
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Our team created this prototype using the Goal-Directed Design process. This is a process that starts with extensive research and the creation of personas, and scenarios in which personas would use the product. Then, a prototype is created and its features are tested on real users. Goal Directed Design is an iterative process that leaves endless room for improvement to the users' experience with the product. Unfortunately, Muse will remain a prototype for now due to academic time constraints.
Research
We started off our design process by conducting a literature review, a competitive analysis, and interviewing who could be potential users of Muse. Research prior to design is important when designing for users. We wanted to see what products were currently on the market, and what people had to say about writing music and writer's block so that down the line we would be able to set goals for our personas and requirements for the app.
Literature Review
For our literature review, we wanted to find out the main causes for writer's block, as well as common ways to overcome it. This way, we would have a strengthened knowledge of writer's block going into interviews and our competitive audit.
Commons causes of writer's block:
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Timing
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Fear
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Perfectionism
Ways to help yourself overcome writer's block:
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Write often, as much as you can
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Get used to writing your feelings, its gonna be weird
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Pinpoint what you think are good lyrics and what are bad
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Not everything has to rhyme
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Cut out cliches
Competitive Audit
After our literature review, we all got together, downloaded potential competitors of Muse, and discussed their features, lack of features, and any praises or gripes we found within these apps. We wanted to see what other products were doing correctly and incorrectly so we had a base understanding of where we may end up.
User Interviews
At this point, we started interviewing potential users to find out more information about our user base. This information would help us create a primary and secondary persona to design the app for.
Some common features that we found in our interviews regardless of experience level with writing lyrics:
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All songwriters encounter writer's block
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Songwriters can have problems with finding inspiration for new lyrics
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Writer's block is incredibly frustrating
These interviews further confirmed that there was indeed a market for an app like Muse. Potential users were very fond of the idea of being able to use an "all in one" app to aid their songwriting process
Subject Matter Expert Interviews
We also conducted two interviews with local music artists with years of experience in music production, songwriting, and performance. We took their opinions into account as well for persona creation, and they gave some fantastic feedback that helped out our process immensely.
Personas
After gathering and analyzing all of the information we acquired from our interviews, we started to create our personas. Personas are theoretical people that represent an entire group of users for a product, and how they would use said product. They help us to be more empathetic designers when we consider requirements for a product. Shown below are the two personas created.
Goals
We also created context scenarios for our personas which describe a scenario that would enable them to open and use Muse.
Requirements
After creating our two personas, we started to jot down requirements that they would each need to have a positive experience while using Muse. Due to the fact that our two personas were at different skill levels, we had to be able to provide tools and features that could satisfy higher level songwriters, while also not overwhelming beginners and providing them with features that they would be able to grow into.
Site Mapping / Keypath
Once we had decided on required features for the app, we created a site map which is a map of all the pages and features that a product will include (at the time at least), and we decided on the keypath scenario which is the most common path users will take when using a product.
Site Map
Keypath
Early Stage Paper Prototyping
We then started sketching wireframes and layouts for some of our features before jumping into digital prototyping.
Low Fidelity Prototype
After we had our ideas sketched out, we started creating our low fidelity prototype in Figma. Pictured below shows the process of creating a new project within the app.
User Testing
Once we had a functioning prototype, it was time to test its features on users and make sure that it was intuitive and easy to use. Unfortunately, users did not understand some of the features or how to use them. We went back to the drawing board with some of our features and then started to create our high fidelity prototype.
A Grand Challenge
It was around this time that the COVID-19 outbreak became a large enough threat to close schools down. This would become a large obstacle in our team's design process because all of our meetings became remote from this point on.
We'd have many remote meetings like this from that point on.
Deliverable
After many remote meetings, we added an onboarding walkthrough, changed the color scheme, and improved the intuitiveness of many features. We user-tested with a few of the same users again and they were very impressed with the progress we made. They navigated through the app much more easily, and they were able to complete tasks that we asked them to complete more quickly. The final prototype is available to play around with below.
Click on the phone to see the full prototype!
Takeaway
Working on this project was a blast. I love the team that I worked with and we all got to work with something that we are all passionate about: Music. Even though COVID-19 caused problems for our design process, we were able to work through it and still produce a product that we are all incredibly proud of. I learned a lot during these few months and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
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