Design and case study of a musician-finding app to help people book musicians for weddings. Addressing issues like limited musician information, budget constraints, and scheduling. This case study talks abut features such as advanced search, schedule-setting, and accessible navigation to streamline the musician-booking process.

I worked as the sole user researcher and designer for this project. I had discussions with the people who belong to the targeted audience, musicians, and band managers. Had one-to-one interviews with users, did two round of usability testings. I also performed competitive analysis and market research. On the basis of all the insights from the findings, I made wireframes, high-fi designs, and prototypes for the app.

Primary

1. Make something seamless and less cumbersome.

2. Empower the users to find what they want, based on their budget, taste, and time.

Secondary

1. Give local artist or musicians a chance to promote their offerings.

Next step of the UX research was to map the user journey and make the user flow. It was critical to achieving the objectives because it helped visualize the points where users encounter friction.

By making every step count, from browsing to booking, the journey map provided insights into user pain points and highlighted features needed to improve the experience, such as enhanced search options and scheduling visibility.

This process clarifies user needs and informs the app's design, smoothing the user path and ensuring users can quickly and efficiently book musicians in one fell swoop. Click here to see the user journey map of the first user persona, Iyahiya. And click here to see the main user flow.

Conducting a competitive analysis on the solutions that present in the market revealed key opportunities for refinement. For example, TWC boasts a strong brand presence, which enhances user trust, but the layout of their site can feel overwhelming due to cluttered features. Three competitors (local and global) were analyzed and their approach and offerings were laid out head-to-head to find out the secret sauce of success.

Observing these strengths and weaknesses among competitors emphasized the importance of streamlined, user-friendly interfaces and clear navigation paths. Given below is general a list of Strengths, Weaknesses, Gaps, and Opportunities that came in light while conducting the research.

I started drawing ideas with pen and paper based on the user flow. Fleshing out ideas with the paper wireframes is an essential process that's quick and flexible. Later, I digitally draw the concepts and prepared low-fidelity prototypes based on them for the first usability testing.

I conducted unmoderated, remote usability tests with open ended questions to a large number of participants. These were the focal topics of the usability tests:

1. If the main flow was easy to understand for the participants.

2. If they can search and browse the app without any problem.

3. What did the struggle with and the friction points.

4. Do they see themselves using the app.

Usability test 1 findings

With the low-fi prototypes (click here to see them), some interesting insights were found, notably: 

1. Users found the general layout easy to navigate.

2. Some of the users wanted weekly or top rated musicians or artists on the homepage always.

3. 87.5% of the users didn't look the genre, just wanted to watch clips of the artists playing. 37.5% wanted the genre as a filter.

Usability test 2 findings

Findings from first test shaped the high-fidelity designs. I made an Affinity Diagram based on the data gathered from the participants of the first test, I used the map to sort out and prioritize the user feedback. Later, those became the study insights to be addressed and tweaked for the mockups. Click here to see the high-fidelity prototype. Here are the feedback from second round of testing:

1. Users found the general layout easy to navigate.

2. A few participants suggested more intuitive labels or icons for certain features, like “Favorites” and “Recommendations,” to enhance usability further.

1. Most of the text, buttons and the background have a higher contrast ratio (13.28:1/ 17.12:1). It will help the users with low-eyesight or color blindness.

2. Spacing, hierarchy, and layout of the app are friendly to the users as it helps them to focus on the right action to be taken. The touch points are at least 47px in height and adequate in width.

3. Accessible typography was the cornerstone of the app. It is neither too big nor too small for the users. The typeface I used in the app is called Roboto-Flex which is supported on wide variety of devices.

1. This project was a part of my UX certification courses. It taught me so much about the fantastic world of user experience research and design. Though I am content with what I have made, some additional functionalities should be added to this project, which can elevate the user experience for the musicians; who reside on the other side of the spectrum.

2. The most important thing I learned doing this project is that the design elements should always be goal driven. Every component should have its purpose, hence design system is important. Without purpose, a fancy-looking design can even harm the core experience, let alone help it.