InMuse
Enabling musicians to manage their music careers
Overview
Role
Sole Product Designer that led the end to end design process
Timeline
April - July 2022 (3 months)
PROBLEM
In today’s world, independent artists need to manage their music career as a business in order to succeed. In a conventional record label deal, the artist (non-independent artist) is only responsible for making and performing their music, as the label hires and pays for producers, managers, promoters, etc. to grow the artist's career. Independent artists, however, are not necessarily able to afford a team and must perform all the non-music tasks on their own to successfully grow their career. Unfortunately, they may not be equipped or skilled to manage all of these tasks on their own.
DESIGN PROCESS
SOLUTION
A new mobile application to help independent artists manage different areas of their music career, including their scheduling, projects, performances, finances, and social media. Because independent artists use multiple tools (or no tools) to manage these different areas, the solution now provides a one stop shop where artists can centralize all important aspects of their career.
Research
SUMMARY
I began the process by conducting desk research to validate and better understand why musicians struggle with managing their music career. Once I had a grasp on the problem space, I organized and conducted interviews with potential users to dive deeper into their music career and understand their behaviors, pain points, and needs.
DESK RESEARCH
I initially began this project with the hypothesis that artists struggle with managing and growing their music career. However, I wanted to validate this hypothesis before thinking about designing a solution. I developed a set of key questions to answer through my research:
Who is struggling with managing their music career?
What are the main causes?
How are musicians currently managing?
What alternatives are available?
Findings
Independent artists (those not signed to record labels) are the ones who struggle most with managing their career
These struggles are due to the fact that there are many non-music tasks that artists need to perform, such as marketing, managing finances, and managing day-to-day scheduling and tasks
These types of tasks are time consuming and independent artists are unaware that these tasks are important and/or are not equipped to manage these tasks on their own
There are individual apps to help with each non-music task, but these are all separate from each other and musicians are not necessarily using them
The alternatives to managing your own career is having a friend/family member manage or finding a professional manager, which usually requires money and enough traction in your career to get noticed
USER INTERVIEWS
After validating the problem space through secondary research, I wanted to find possible solutions to improve music management, so I conducted interviews with potential users to understand how they approach their music career and what problems they face. My goal was to find answers to these key questions:
What tasks do you think are important to manage your music career?
What are the tasks that you currently perform to manage your career?
For each task, what tool(s) do you use to execute?
What tasks are most difficult for you?
Findings
“You’re an entrepreneur and everything is in your hands. You are CEO. You are marketing. You are sales. You are time management. You are project management.”
“In music, you have to be your own manager unless you have reached a high level”
“It’s annoying to have to post the same content on different social media channels, especially when you don’t have a marketing team or social media manager”
“I operate in fear mode and am constantly afraid of not making enough money”
“Managing all of the little tasks for producing a song is a lot to deal with”
Synthesis
SUMMARY
Once I gathered results from our primary research, I created an affinity map in order to find common themes to influence what design solutions to pursue. I additionally developed personas to understand what type of users to design the solution for, and I also created problem statements to hone in on specific user pain points to solve.
AFFINITY MAPPING
To synthesize all of the research findings, I created an affinity map to identify common themes from all the interviews conducted.
Affinity MapThemes Identified:
1) Developing Music
2) Marketing / Social Media
3) Managing Day-to-Day
4) Managing Clients/Gigs
5) Networking
6) Finances
PERSONAS
After identifying common themes, I developed two personas to capture my user base for my design. While there were some similarities in certain behaviors between the two users, such as fear of financial insecurity, I found that there were two completely different sets of problems and motivations.
“Creative Chris” is more of a hobbyist and his main challenge is finishing projects and building good habits towards getting work done
“Serious Sam”, however, is a professional musician and runs his career like a business, so he wants tools for areas such as day-to-day management, finances, project management, and marketing.
PROBLEM STATEMENTS
After developing personas, I wanted to develop statements that clearly articulate what problems I am going to solve for in the design phase. I intentionally structured the problem statements in the form of “How might we…” to spark creativity when ideating about solutions. Below were the problem statements formed:
How might we make it easier for musicians to better manage their schedules to accomplish their music goals/tasks?
How might we help musicians manage all of the prep work for their upcoming performances (client needs/communication, timelines, setup, logistics, etc.)
How might we give musicians a better way of managing their finances and expenses?
How might we make it easier for artists to update their social media channels in a less time consuming way?
How might we help musicians find quality performance opportunities?
How might we help artists find qualified music professionals to help develop their music ideas?
Ideation
SUMMARY
After developing my personas and problem statements, I went through the process of creating user stories to capture what features and ideas need to be present in the solution. After deciding what user stories to prioritize for my MVP, I then created a sitemap to ensure the app is well-structured for a user to navigate. Based on the sitemap, I then developed user flows to think through what a user would need in order to complete certain actions. All of these items allowed me to generate and test sketches for key user flows, which ultimately influenced my approach to building out the app design.
USER STORIES
In the first stage of ideation, I went through the process of developing user stories. This process allowed me to lay out all features that would be valuable to include for my users. I intentionally tied each epic to each problem statement above (ex. Managing finances), so I had a logical grouping of user stories.
After laying out all user stories, I realized that I was not going to have time to include every feature, so I made a decision to prioritize which features would be included in the MVP (minimum viable product) and which features would be included in a later release. I made the decision that I was not going to include user stories that were linked to Finding a Performance or Finding a Music Professional in the MVP. Though these features would be extremely valuable, it would require designing out a separate app for music professionals and venue owners to advertise their services.
Example User StoriesSITEMAP
After developing user stories, I developed a sitemap for my app. The process forced me to think through how to logically organize different screens and establish a proper hierarchy of screens in the app, so that users would find it easy and intuitive to navigate. Given I had organized my epics by each problem statement, I decided to make my sitemap consistent and make sure each main page corresponded to an epic, so that each section of the app was dedicated towards solving a problem statement from above.
SitemapUSER FLOWS
After developing a sitemap, I thought through what were the most important actions that a user was going to need to complete when managing their career. I decided that these 5 flows were the most important to develop.
1) Adding a task/to-do item
2) Adding an event to schedule
3) Posting on multiple social media channels at once
4) Adding information about an upcoming performance
5) Logging a finance transaction
After identifying my critical paths, I developed user flow diagrams to help think through a user’s path towards completing each action above. The process also allowed me to evaluate my sitemap structure and address potential user obstacles to improve navigability.
Example: User Flow for Adding a TaskSKETCHING
Based on my user stories and flows, I then began to sketch out screens for each user flow. This allowed me to think through different ideas of how to represent each flow.
To quickly validate if my sketches were intuitive and easy to navigate, I conducted 5 guerilla usability tests with friends. Users overall found the flows intuitive but were able to identify missing features/fields, confusing verbiage, and opportunities to further enhance each flow, such as being able to customize calendar and task views. Based on their feedback, I felt like I had a good foundation to start developing each screen.
Sketches of Critical ScreensDesign
SUMMARY
Taking the insights from ideation, I developed wireframes to start mapping out content and elements in each screen. I then dedicated time towards creating a style guide, consisting of a proper color palette, typography, and iconography to match the application’s brand. I then applied this style guide in developing out the UI and creating a prototype consisting of high-fidelity screens.
WIREFRAMING
Using the guerilla usability testing results, I created wireframes for each user flow, so I could start arranging elements in each screen and implement features to enhance usability and navigation of the app.
Tasks PageCalendar PageSocial Media PageUpcoming Perform.Tasks PageCalendar PageSocial Media PageUpcoming Perf. PageFinances PageFinances PageSTYLE GUIDE
Before creating a prototype from my wireframes, I put time into creating a style guide. To do this, I first thought through what the brand should be for the company and developed a mission statement along with a brand personality and a set of brand attributes. I wanted the branding of the company to reflect passion and creativity to communicate that the app is to enable artists to pursue their passion in life. I chose the name “InMuse” to reflect this, and I created a moodboard by taking the brand personality and pulling a collage of inspiring images that correspond with the brand. Doing this made choosing a color palette, typography, and iconography much clearer, as I had an aesthetic to work towards.
HIGH-FIDELITY MOCKUPS
In the last phase of design, I translated my wireframes using the style guide into high-fidelity mockups. I developed 5 key screens first and then audited each screen to ensure there were no color contrast or accessibility issues. After validating, I built out high-fidelity mockups for the remaining screens. I then created a clickable prototype with transitions, which allowed me to vet the navigation and functionality of the app.
Testing & Iteration
SUMMARY
In the last phase of design, I focused my attention towards conducting usability tests and iterating on the prototype based on test results to enhance the experience.
USABILITY TEST PLAN
After creating a clickable prototype, I went about conducting usability testing to understand what type of problems users have when interacting with the app, as well as determining users’ satisfaction with the app. Before conducting, I devised a usability test plan to prepare how each session was going to go and ensure I was receiving results that would enable me to make adequate improvements to the prototype. The test plan included:
5 scenarios to see if the user was able to use the app to complete (each scenario corresponds to user flow from above)
Revisit key screens to understand if the users found the screens easy to follow, presentable, and usable
Additional time to gather open ended feedback to see if users identified missing key functionalities or features needed for artist management
In terms of participants, I intentionally targeted active full-time or part-time musicians, as they ultimately would reflect who I am targeting to use the app.
FIRST ROUND OF TESTING & ITERATION
For the first round of usability tests, I conducted 5 moderated tests via Zoom. The tests were extremely helpful in identifying a number of issues. The most critical issues I found were:
Participants wanted to see tasks in their calendar view and not completely separate from each other
Participants did not understand what the “Performance Management” section was and would prefer to store information about upcoming performances directly in their calendar
Participants wanted to see their tasks for a specific project or performance they are working on
In addition, participants were able to point out minor inconsistencies between screens in the app and identify minor functionalities and features to add to enhance the experience, such as being able to share a task/event with a bandmate or the ability to add song files, voice memos, lyric drafts.
To address the critical issues, I combined the task and calendar view, inserted fields from the Performance Management section into the Add Event flow, and created 2 separate views on projects and performances where artists would see corresponding tasks and files.
Tasks PageCalendar Page
Combined Tasks & Events PageProject ViewPerformances ViewSocial Media ViewSelecting Channel(s)Preview PostSECOND ROUND OF TESTING & ITERATION
After iterating on the prototype, I conducted another round of usability tests (5) to gather feedback on the new version of the prototype. Overall, there were not as many critical issues identified as the previous round.
The major piece of feedback was that participants wanted the social media “Create a Post on multiple channels” to be revised so that they can create a post separately for each channel in one screen, rather than creating one post and sending out the same post to multiple channels. Participants also identified some additional features they would like to see, such as being able to store contacts, take notes directly in the app for music ideas, and seeing a breakdown of income in the Finances section. Overall though, the feedback was extremely positive and participants found the app incredibly useful, with some participants saying they would love to use the app whenever it launches.
Finances ViewAdd TransBudget ViewProjects ViewPerf. ViewAdd TaskCalendar ViewAdd EventConclusion
From this project, I learned a lot about the end to end design process. At first, I was eager to start wireframing and developing screens right off the bat, but I quickly understood the importance of phases, such as research, synthesis, ideation, and testing. These phases were crucial to understanding the problem well and bringing ideas together in a logical manner to provide more clarity in approaching the design phase.
Though the project ended, I still have many iterations of the application that I would like to continue pursuing, as I see this app can help many artists with their career. To start, I would like to address all minor issues raised from usability testing that I did not have time to complete. Secondly, I would like to build out additional features of the application, such as the Opportunities component of finding performances and music professionals. I would also like to create a section where artists can work out and capture various ideas for their music, rather than having to use pen and paper or the Notes App. Lastly, I would like to conduct further rounds of usability testing to ensure any new features resonate well with potential users. My goal is to continue enhancing the design and working with a developer to bring this solution to real life and help artists achieve their musical goals.