REDISCOVER MUSIC
The Challenge
Melody App is the brainchild of two entertainment executives. They wanted to create a brand new way to discover and share content around topics you love – starting with music.
My Role
For this 3 phase project at Sidebench, we were responsible for product management, art direction, and UX/UI:
- leading workshops & design studios
- interviewing users
- grooming user stories
- wireframing
- guiding UI exploration
- prototyping and testing
- and preparing assets for development
We worked with another Project Manager, 3 UI Designers, and one other UX Designer.
On the client side, they developed beautiful, intuitive product designs that sped development. Our server-side and client-facing internal teams felt that the delivery was so well vetted that we were able to develop the minimum viable product with great effectiveness.
Gregg Colvin
CEO & Cofounder of Melody
VP at Fox Interactive Media
Phase one prototype
Phase One
The clients needed a fast, high-fidelity prototype to wow investors. I managed our team of 1 other UX designer and 2 UI Designers in product visioning, requirements gathering, collaborative ideation, timeline and budgeting, and client communication.
In just 3 and a half weeks, we delivered a gorgeous, highly interactive concept that raised more than double the expected amount of funds from seed investors.
Phase Two
Melody needed to have a truly unique creation pattern. I designed hands-on with the clients to explore and evolve Melody into a one-of-kind experience.
I paired up with Paul, another product manager, to ideate over 20 new concepts, and prototype over 4 intense weeks.
User interviews → Personas Updates
We updated our proto-personas from phase 1, after speaking with a few music influencers (shoutout to Clark from Noon Pacific) and music content fans. The personas guided our user testing and recruitment plan later on.
Creation Concepting
The initial user flow for creating a ‘collection’ was cut-and-dry. While the user flow contained all of the essential steps, this visual helped spur the imagination of the client and team.
Key questions:
- How can we compress this task to less than 3 minutes ?
- What can we simplify or add to make the experience more engaging?
- How does this experience differ for our Curator and Fan personas?
Collection Concepting
The crux of the concepting phase was what a ‘collection’ would be.
The founders were stuck on the idea of a 6-sided cube that the user would roll around to see the different multi-media content pieces. I encouraged them to step back and think outside of the box (pun intended).
Key considerations:
- How do we balance between seeing everything in the collection and diving into each content piece?
- Could we encourage an endless browsing behavior?
- Would Curator users be incentivized to create collections compared to Fan users?
Below is the evolution of the ‘collection’ design, once we had eliminated dozens of other concepts that didn’t make the cut.
Phase Three (almost there!)
In the last stretch, we engaged the clients to refine user stories and visual branding for the new direction of the app.
Our squad created the highly interactive prototype (video at the top), concept and A/B tested with 15 target users age 18 to mid-20s, and refined the product for development.
Visual design tiles
Annotated Mockup Userflows
These userflows, paired with our Zeplin project, mapped out the structure, logic, and stylistic elements for Melody’s new development team.
REDISCOVER MUSIC
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