Apple Music
Recreating the live music experience during the pandemic
3 week sprint - Concept Brief - Team of 4
Overview
Client & Brief
Following the impact of COVID-19, Apple recognised the importance of continuing to offer music to its members while further supporting their artists.
With this in mind, we were tasked with redesigning their app to create a way for artists/musicians to create ‘artist rooms’ on their profile where they can host chats, acoustic gigs, podcasts and where they interact with their audience. To access these ‘rooms’ users would need to support the artist with a small membership, amount chosen by the artist.
The new design needed to encompass the following features:
● Ability to access a ‘music/artist room’ hub
● Ability to pay for the membership
● Ability to browse and follow artists and get notified when they are live-streaming from their room
● Ability to request to talk or message (both via video and/or via mic) in the music room
● Ability to see the monthly support that the artist gets
● Ability to praise artists with a sort of ‘like/clap’ system
● Ability to save key moments of a ‘music room’ to easily find when event is finished
● Ability to access ‘music room’ history
● Ability to have breakout rooms with other users
● Ability to message the artist privately and ask questions
My Role
I worked as part of a team of 4 to deliver this project. We were each were responsible for all elements of the UX process, including comparative and competitive research, interviews, ideation, sketching, designing and iterating based on usability testing, developing high fidelity prototype and final design.
Process & Insights
Discover
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Competitor analysis of Apple Music's main competitor Spotify and took note of their 'make a contribution' feature for artist's during the pandemic
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Researched event booking apps such as Dice and theatre websites such as the Barbican and National Theatre, to see how they had adapted to connect with their audience to release livestream or pre-recorded content during the pandemic.
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Concluded the proposed 'Artist's room' feature would need to combine a livestream, event booking and existing features of the music streaming platform.
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5 interviews with music lovers gave us the following vital insights:
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Users want to connect with artists.
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Users want access to exclusive content.
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Users do not want to pay extra membership on top of subscription services.
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Users do not want to interact with others in any depth whilst on the app or watching livestreams.
Define
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Detailed the average users journey trying and failing to enjoy live music during the pandemic. We highlighted key pain points including feeling disconnected from artists and being disillusioned with the content available online.
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Using our research findings, we created a representation of a typical Apple Music user, a weekend warrior called Martin.
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Martin’s problem can be defined as follows:
Martin needs a better way to interact and engage with his favourite music artists, while accessing live and on-demand content, because his restricted ability to attend real life music events during lockdown has made him feel disconnected.
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This research enabled us to think of more ways we could help Martin and explore areas to improve on the app to address his problem. We considered the following thoughts:
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How might we make it easier for users to connect with their favourite artists?
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How might we engage users in livestreams?
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How might we bring the gig atmosphere into the home?
Develop
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Facilitated a design studio with our group and sketched out initial ideas to help create the music rooms and engage users with their favourite artists.
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Took insights from design studio and research and sketched a user flow from an artist's page, to buying a ticket for a one off livestream, a waiting room, livestream and after party page.
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Tested with 8 users at each stage of development, from sketch to low and mid fidelity.
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Iterated on designs in response to usability testing. This included adding a donation option and supporting artists page and iterations to Waiting room and Afterparty pages.
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Also iterated on the interactions available in the livestream including donations, clapping and the option to ask artist questions.
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Delivered a proposed solution in the form of a high-fidelity prototype.
Deliver - The Outcome
Key changes made through user testing
Challenge : What is the Afterparty and the Waiting room?
We created a waiting room page before each live event in the artist's rooms which gave users the option to play a quiz related to the artist and learn more about the supporting artist. We also created an afterparty page which allowed users to watch a Q&A with the artist (questions could be asked within the livestream), see pre-recorded behind the scenes content, show highlights and shop merchandise.
User testing informed the content we included in these pages, as people were initially confused with what was available in earlier wireframes, we knew we needed high quality images and clear delineated sections on each page when we created the final design. The accompanying image illustrates areas of user confusion in red, which were made clearer in further prototype iterations.
Solution: Signpost information clearly and highlight sections so users know the purpose of the pages.
Challenge: where to include extra charges to support independent artists on a subscription service.
Although users were not willing to pay an additional membership fee on top of their Apple Music subscription, we introduced donation points so users still had the opportunity to support independent artists.
During testing it became clear users were confused where their money was going, so we made it clear donations were going towards the less well known support acts in the next design iteration. (From right to left in the accompanying image).
These testing insights were really helpful in highlighting the need to include clear UX writing to guide the user along when dealing with a financial interactions.
Testing showed users want absolute transparency in knowing how their money would be used, as well as a checkout system they could trust.
Solution: clear and simple language explaining where payment is directed and donations towards support acts.
The Solution
Every design decision was directly related to the original problem of supporting artists and promoting connection between artists and music lovers, and further informed by interview insights and user testing. The final proposed design includes:
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Artist room: extension to already existing artist’s page on Apple Music, available for one-off events and featuring behind the scenes content and opportunities to connect with artist.
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Donations: in place of the originally proposed added membership fee, to help support independent artists in the pandemic.
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Waiting room page: to build excitement for the live event, featuring opportunity to learn more about the artist and supporting artists.
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Livestream booking and streaming page: featuring opportunities to donate, clap and ask questions to the artists for after gig Q&A
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Afterparty page: to continue the party atmosphere after the event and access behind the scenes content
The Prototype
Conclusion
Key learnings
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Don’t assume. My personal views on live streaming and music led me to assume most people wouldn't be interested in this feature and would want to wait until live music was available in person. This was not true! My assumptions coloured my view initially so I was so happy to get great, contrary insights from a number of people during interviews and user testing.
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I love working as a group. I was apprehensive about working with 3 other people to complete this project but we all brought different ideas to the table, shared the workload and produced a great solution for the user.
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Research is key. This is the most in depth research I had done on a UX project up to this point as the brief asked for so many features which required broad research of different apps and websites. I found it really interesting digging into various arts, gaming and music streaming platforms to inform our final designs.
Next Steps
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Develop flow for being notified about livestreams
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Develop the Afterparty and #AppleAsktheArtist
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More testing and more iterations
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Investigating VR and festival additions and responsive design
