Music Event app
An app designed to help people to hire musicians for a wedding venue or any other event
Project overview
Anyone who's planning an event will be taking care of a venue, catering, stylist, decoration, etc... but when it comes to musical entertainment - here is where the things come to be quite uncertain.
Mostly, you don't know the musicians who will be playing/singing, and you will most likely be hiring blindly, or you end up paying to an intermediary agency twice or thrice.
To organize an event is a very complex duty. Customers usually feel overwhelmed and exhausted while searching for any of the services. Mostly they need ratings, comments, and photo/video material to make a choice. So, the less time they spend finding services, the more time they have to calmly enjoy an event.
The MusicEvent app´s goal was to solve the problem for both - customers and musicians, assuring reliable search experience for customer, and a simple way to communicate and get paid for musicians.
My role:
UX/UI designer leading the app design from conception to delivery
Duration:
July 2021 to April 2022
Tools:
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Responsibilities:
- Conducting interviews
- Paper and digital wireframes
- Low and high-fidelity prototyping
- Conducting usability studies
- Accounting for accessibility
- Iterating on designs
- Determining information architecture
- Responsive design.
This project is a fictitious scenario, completed as part of Google UX Professional Certificate
Understanding the user
Research, Interviews, Analyzing and Synthesizing Data
I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I am designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified through research were couples who are going to get married soon.
Customer
User type 1
"In my experience, hiring a music band for me is not much different than hiring almost anything online, but because it is a wedding, the price is higher."
Says Steve
Customers are willing to pay more so they can feel safe the day of their event
Hiring musicians - is the same service for customers as hiring a venue or a hair professional.
Customers are afraid to be fooled, or to waste tons of time searching, or pay for something and watch how the event unfolds. I needed to build a strong reliability system.
So the guarantees such as contract, prepayment, simple access to chat, video, and comments - are good tools to make their experience reliable, fast, and secure.
(To understand our users I conducted a competitive audit, created user personas and user journeys).
Musician
User type 2
"After my performance I would like to be paid immediately, and not feeling awkward waiting till customers give me the money distracting them from their event."
Says Moss
It is common that musicians are waiting to get paid after their performance. Also they would like to feel safe that customers are serious about hiring them, and would not chuck them the month/week/day before, because they found other musicians. Musicians rely on this performance, and want guaranties, such as prepayment, contract, and in-app payment.
Refining the design
Pain Points, Personas, Wireframes
Reduce worries level for customers
One of the customer´s pain points included trust issues - users are afraid of being fooled by musicians not showing at the event, or not being good performers.
Using user journey maps for personas helped me to reveal how important would be to make all the searching process simple and reliable
Using paper, and digital wireframes I addressed the user´s pain points adding comments and rating of other clients, also, musicians could add to their profiles videos/photos from performances. "Verified profile" badge should add more reliability to the profile.
In addition, customers can quickly peek essential information in the feed, such as price, instrument, rating, and location.
Low and High-Fidelity Interactive Prototypes, Usability Studies
Continue planning your event effortlessly. How I used Usability Studies to reveal research mistakes
The most critical user flows of the application are the most boring flows. In this case these are: the searching process, and the booking process, because customers want to find a good musician right now, and safely pay for them at this very moment.
And these are the pain points for these problems:
Loss of time - users spend a lot of time in order to understand whether the service is reliable or not;
Money - customers want legal confirmation to feel secure and rely on this exact service.
Two rounds of usability studies with low and high-fidelity prototypes helped me to reveal mistakes and stuck points of user flows.
Users were distracted by a multi-step form of search which I simplified to one screen. To the booking process I added: multiple payment methods, an option to edit some of the event´s details, and a confirmation sent to email.
Accessibility: Color Contrast, Structure, Consistency
The design was created according to WCAG standards ensuring color contrast combinations, and a logical distribution of information so that the users can easily perform the action they desire. All images and icons containing essential information were duplicated in text, and avoided use of all caps to secure readability for different user capabilities.
Also I used a design system to keep all elements consistent throughout the project.
Color contrast tested according to WCAG standards
Conclusion
In a longer-term development I would like to address the problem of uncertainty of music gig life. A big amount of musicians are dependent on events, and they struggle to acquire a stable income from it monthly.
I learned the significance of boring tasks, such as booking or searching processes. If users are unable to perform any of those actions - you lose them.
