STREAM
STREAM helps musicians turn their creative talent into successful businesses by providing the entrepreneurial skills and resources needed to thrive in the global music industry.
The Situation
Project goal:
Enhance the platform's aesthetics and functionality to provide artists and managers with transparent music distribution and metric viewing
More specifically, STREAM requested my team’s support with:
1. Redesigning the UI
2. Creating a style guide for dark mode
3. Finding a way to add new users to the account and grant differential access
4. Creating a way for artists to upload their work and distribute it to different channels
5. Creating a section for users to log their merchandise
6. Creating a new feature, Fanlytcs, that exposes growth opportunities within the Artist’s social media accounts
The Solution
The Details
My role:
- Research
- Heuristic Analysis
- Ideating
- App Map
- User Flow
- Sketching
- Prototyping
- User Testing
- Visual Design/ Style Guide
The team:
Keva Hosozawa, Lulu, Ping
Stakeholders:
CEO, Chief Marketing Officer
Duration:
November 2022 to December 2022
Tools:
Figma
The Process
Think
First Step
The Stakeholders provided us with the last team’s case study and all their assets.
After reviewing the data, we determined that conducting three heuristic analyses—two of competitors and one of STREAM’s current state—would be a good starting point.
Heuristic Analyses
We chose 3 heuristics crucial to guiding users of different experience levels through the interface and providing adequate information.
1. Visibility of System Status
2. Consistency and Standards
3. Help and Documentation
The two competitors we chose have the same target audience as STREAM:
1. Soundcharts
- Soundcharts is a SaaS company that aggregates data to provide analytics for the
music industry. It tracks artists' performances on various streaming platforms
- Key features: performance metrics, benchmarking, artist monitoring, talent discovery, report audit
2. un:hurd
- un:hurd is a music marketing company that utilizes data collected from all social and streaming platforms and turns it into actionable marketing insights
- Key features: distribution services, playlisting, PR, social media strategy, content creation, marketing reports
How Might We?
Now that we have explored possible areas for improvement we ask some HMW questions:
- HMW add new users to the account and grant differential access efficiently
- HMW provide artists the easiest way to upload their work to distribute to different channels.
- HMW incorporate the new user flows and features into the existing design and improve its usability
Our ideation process helps us answer these.
Change of direction
A meeting with stakeholders leads to the creation of two new features:
1. Fanlytics: Allows users to track their social media metrics and identify areas for potential growth.
2. Merch: Enables users to log the merchandise they are selling.
This iteration removes existing sections (Music and Gigs) that no longer serve the app's purpose.
App Map
We create an app map of the new product and then analyze it to integrate the new flows seamlessly.
The flows that are created:
1. Add new user
2 Distribute/ Upload music
User Flow:
add user
Lulu ultimately prototypes the flow for adding a new user.
User Flow:
upload music
Ping creates and prototypes the flow for uploading music.
Make
Work Distribution
Given the task of adding features within our time constraints, we've adjusted our workflow. Originally, each designer was set to lead a specific design phase, but due to practicality, we've assigned focused roles to each designer.
- Keva: Fanlytcs, Merchandise, and Style Guide
- Lulu: Homepage, add a team member flow, and Style Guide assistance
- Ping: Distribution flow
Despite these changes, our strong team remains committed to our design process and achieving our MVP goal! 😁
Style Guide
The requirements were:
1. Dark mode
2. The brand colors are turquoise and purple
3. It fits the brand personality (approachable, honest, energetic, and “the hub for your brand strategy”)
Later iterations were made to the Style Guide when Lulu was working on the home page.
Fanlytcs
After creating the user flow, I sketch and prototype the screens for the first release of Fanlytcs.
The stakeholder provides me with a dashboard to base the design off of.
Stakeholder requirements:
1. Similar colors (turquoise and purple)
2. Contains the same content
My thoughts. How can I:
1. Convey the relevancy and importance of Fanlytcs’ data
2. Design the UI with flexibility that allows future iterations to be seamlessly made
3. Design it to fit STREAM’s brand
Merch
During stakeholder meetings, we discussed adding a merchandise section initially intended for inventory (shown in my low-fidelity wireframes).
However, subsequent meetings revised its purpose for this release to log all merchandise the artist sells, as reflected in my high-fidelity wireframes. I ask myself similar questions as I did for the Fanlytcs design and get to it.
Test
Usability Testing
Our user testing phase began with our high-fidelity screens. This was the most time-efficient way to conduct testing. We tested 5 participants who fit STREAM’s demographic.
What we want to know:
1. How do users find the aesthetics and functionalities of the “Fanlytcs” section?
2. How do users find the aesthetics and functionalities of the “Merch” section?
Fanlytcs Page Findings
Most common issues and comments:
1. No timeline context
2. Gender graph overlaps with “Listeners” and feels redundant
3. Would like the ability to compare months in “Engagement Rate”
Fanlytcs Iterations
Overall changes:
1. Provided timeline selection option
2. Provided ability to compare up to 3 months of engagement rates
3. Added more context to differentiate Fanlytcs section from Listeners section
4. Added helper text
Merch Page Findings
Most common issues and comments:
1. Finds the flow intuitive
2. Likes how "Overall Sales" pie chart correlates to "Item Revenue" chart
Merch Iterations
Overall changes:
1. Simplified search, filters, and sort UI
Final Product
Conclusion
If we had more time to work on this project I would love to:
- Conduct further testing on the distribution flow
- Conduct further testing on the Fanlytcs feature
- Content categories should be further researched and tested
- UI further tested
- Iterations on how the design could be simplified
- Conduct further testing on Merch section
-Is content sufficient?
Experience gained:
- Working on an awesome team of designers and stakeholders!!
- Learning how to handle product pivot better- not losing sight of the MVP and keeping expectations realistic will guide you in the right direction!
I am excited about STREAM’s future and look forward to seeing later iterations from other teams!