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BOOST Music App

Give rising musicians a better place to promote themselves.

UX Design • UX Research • Project

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Boost is an multi-platform application that aims to help rising young musicians to promote themselves and provide them dedicated support through their early career stages. As the UX researcher and product designer, I was responsible for conducting market researches, user interviews and design the interface on various platforms.

Responsibilities
User Research: Surveys, User Interviews, Persona Mapping, Competitive Analysis, Co-design, Rapid Ethnography, Empathy Maps
UX Design: Sketches, Wireframing, Usability Testing
Prototyping: Xcode
Debrief
Jan 2022 – May 2022
Arthur Tan
Ryun Shim
Marcus Fang
Tools
‍Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Miro
Photoshop
Xcode‍
Problem
Rising student musicians often found themselves in difficult positions when they are trying to promote their first set of albums. Nearly 90% of the albums are published by major producers like Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI, but for grassroot student musicians, it's difficult to let the others know their first album. At the time when I'm researching this topic, the COVID pandemic also hindered the promotion event from the rising musicians in some extent.
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Lack of resources and population willing to hear their music are two of the major difficulties the student musicians are currently facing. Current public fundraising platform could relieve these issues in some extent, but they still have their limitations: 
Approach

01 Scope

Problem Space

Expected Goals

Planning methods

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02 Research

Contextual Inquiries

User Interviews

Task analysis

Persona Creation

Rapid Ethnography

Journey mapping

Affinity Diagram

03 Design

Brainstorming

Co-Design

Sketches(6)

Wireframing

Hi-Fi Prototype

04 Revise

User Testing

Design Recommendations

Feedbacks & Evaluations

2nd-round Iterations

Research
To address this problem, we researched the challenges faced by student musicians and how we can help. Despite lacking backgrounds in music production, composition, or marketing, we applied two research methods: co-design and rapid ethnography.

Our research was divided into three phases, with five video interviews in the primary research phase and two rapid ethnography sessions with student musicians from different universities. I conducted three video interviews and one rapid ethnography session.
In the secondary research phase, we explored existing products and workflows, using an affinity diagram, personas, empathy maps, and journey maps. This helped us identify obstacles faced by student musicians when promoting their music and influencing others.

Then, we entered a co-design phase with the student musicians where we worked on lo-fi prototypes to better understand their challenges and needs. Although these prototypes were not fully integrated into the final design, we combined our findings with previous research to determine which aspects were complete and which were not.

01

White.

White.

02

Black.

Black.

03

Blue.

Blue.

Analyzing Solutions
We looked into the existing products, solutions and creative ways in the range of problem space and analyzed the marketing/promotion events for new, rising student musicians.

Interview SessionsWe interviewed 5 student musicians, 3 from private and public universities and 2 from professional music schools to understand the current experience of student musicians.

Rapid EthnographyTo fully emerge into the musician's perspective, we hosted several rapid ethnography sessions to observe their creation and promotion process in a limited time.

Analysis

After conducting several hourly-long interviews and contextual inquiries with their consent, we summarized the data into affinity diagrams in order to help us better understand the problem and start brainstroming the rough, initial design ideas.
Insight

After interviewing and studying student musicians, we grouped our findings into two categories. These insights helped us generate design ideas and solve problems.

Group 1: Audiences, influences

Insight 1
Student musicians  often find it difficult to attract more listeners on digital platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, which significantly impacted their passion and discouraged them in ths career path.

Insight 2
Due to the COVID pandemic and limited sources, it is difficult for student musicians to perform on large-scale music events or street performaces to attract audiences.

Insight 3
Even if the student musicians have a 'hit' on various media platforms(e.g. Youtube) it is diffficult to attract the viewers or listeners to long-term subscribers and fans.

Group 2: Lack of resources

Insight 4
Starting a career in music industry, no matter which genre, is quite expensive for most of the people. It's not a long-term career option if they didn't have enough influences when they're graduated.

Insight 5
Most of the production and promotion resources are concentrated in few companies, creating a 'rich get richer' effect. For student musicians, it's difficult to get enough resources until getting first 'hit'.

Insight 6
While digital platforms have mostly replaced traditional ways of music production, new students musicians often find it difficult to get enough promotion resources on those platform.

Using our research findings and ethnography sessions, we created personas and empathy maps. These tools helped us outline a hierarchical task analysis, which we used to identify pain points and find ways to expand the influence of student musicians.

Ideation
Task Analysis & Journey Maps
After researching the challenges faced by musicians, we mapped out the process of promoting new songs or albums from their perspective. This helped us identify obstacles and areas for improvement.
Using previous research, we created a persona summarizing common characteristics of student musicians, which helped us better understand their needs, expectations, and frustrations.
With the personas created, we brainstromed our design ideas and co-designed several sketches, with reference to the previous affinity maps, personas and insights in each wireframe draft.

Attract the students on campus.Improvement: The new interface would be favorable and attractive to student in campuses - as they are the major potential listeners to new student musicians.

Matching with similar interest.Improvement: Giving the users to select their genre at the first time when they created their account. Priorities should be given to those with similar tags.

Balance between places.Improvement: The new interfaces would be optimized for both large-screen public displays, and a mobile-friendly interface that could be used as remote control or main interface depend on scenarios.

Solution Space

After getting user feedback, we chose a dual-interface design. One interface is for mobile devices, while the other is for public devices. The design emphasizes different genres to attract student listeners on campus.

To evaluate our designs, we conducted expert evaluations and peer review sessions. Ultimately, our team chose the most favorable design, which we named Boost.

Design
Info/Profile Page
Promote Yourself.
This app aims to promote student musicians and increase their exposure. Users can easily find the musicians' social media and music app accounts, like Spotify profiles, on their profile page. The goal is to attract more first-time listeners and turn them into fans.
Public Interactive Page
Get your vibe.
We created an interface that matches a listener's mood and recommends music accordingly, enabling them to interact with music instead of just listening passively. This makes the matching process more efficient, allowing listeners to find the music they want to hear more quickly.
Player UI - Public Page
Wording the music.
To promote student musicians, we display their music in public campus spaces. Descriptive words are used to indicate the type of music played, enabling listeners to identify the musicians. This attracts more fans than playing background music.
Reflection
Due to time and resource constraints, our music application has limitations that we hope to improve through further testing. While different genres may require different approaches, we are committed to helping student musicians navigate the early stages of their careers and attract listeners on campus, despite major companies like Sony and Warner dominating album releases each year.
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