1. Indie Music artists face challenges when trying gain exposure and grow their audiences.
2. While indimusic.tv aims to address this problem, users report challenges navigating through the website.
My team and I conducted a user-centered website redesign of the IMTV website.
My Design Process - Simplified
Here is a brief overview of my design process. While I believe that design is not linear, I used the steps below to help convey my design process.
Analyzing the current site was the natural first step to the problem discovery. This included reading the content, creating an account, and navigating through the site.
4 participants were asked task oriented questions to identify their attitudes and frustrations. Below are sample questions that were asked:
What is the purpose of the wesbsite?
How would you search for a video?
How would you search by genre?
Users raised prominent issues around site usability. After reviewing the landing page, one user stated: "I don’t know what can be done on the website [...] is it where artists can upload videos?". This confusion was echoed between participants. The main reported pain points are summarized below:
Users did not know the purpose of the website
Users did not find the website trustworthy
Users had trouble navigating the website
The two main users of IMTV include musicians and supporters.
After identifying user groups and referencing walkthrough insights, pinpointing user needs was the natural next step.
1. Clear understanding of what the website does
2. Navigate with more ease
3. Increase trust on the website
Interviewing current indie artists and supporters who use the music website would have enhanced our ability to empathize with long term users of the website. While we believed we identified important user needs, we needed to figure out how to provide the most value our of our project given time and resources constraints. This led us to leverage design heuristics. I outline the top 2 design heuristics that would significantly improve the website UX in the next following sections.
Current website
There are unfamiliar navigation systems on the current website. For example, when the menu bar is expanded, there are two search bars in close proximity which has been shown to confuse first time users.
Intention with redesign
Provide users a sense of familiarity on the website so they do not have to learn an entirely new navigation system.
Current website
The nested nature of the menu items contributed to UX challenges that users faced. This requires them to remember how to navigate through the website and gives them no quick way to find what they are looking for.
Intention with redesign
Reduce cognitive effort by providing users a way to quickly navigate to a desired page.
Before
After
Part of the design solution included the addition of sponsorships. This would enable a supplemental revenue stream for the business. We envisioned that in the long term, this could lead to better outcomes for both users (independent artists and supporters) as a new revenue stream would enable IMT to allocate more investment to their product development.
While I show the first and last versions in the above section, iteration was a significant part of our design process. Iteration was heavily driven by feedback from our project manager. Nevertheless, continuously referencing design heuristics, and drawing inspiration from existing streaming platforms also enhanced out iteration process. Below is an example of what iteration of the view video process looked like, you will find a significant change from V2 to V3. The addition of the left hand menu was an eventual request from the project manager.
The "view video" page is arguably one of the most important screens as it is where users discover artists' music/media. Key features of this page include:
1. View video reactions & leave own impression
2. Follow, share and comment on the video
3. View more from the artist
4. find links to artists' social media
5. View similar artist recommendations
Throughout the process we gauged our progress through feedback from stakeholders including the client, project manager and usability testers.
Short term success
Early on, the project manager presented our initial designs to the client, and relayed positive feedback on how the meeting went, stating that the client wanted us to move forward with the work we were doing. This was a strong indication that we were headed in the right direction with out work.
All IndimusicTV design assets have been submitted to the client. Some of proposed redesigns have been shipped.
Some of our proposed changes have been implemented such as:
- Integration of a revenue stream
- Aspects of refining landing page content - like the removing links to an external site in the description. We were told that changes are happening gradually and that they are seeking investment for a larger development team.
Overall, I am hopeful that more updates will take place on the live site!
