Ensemble Planner
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Ensemble Planner emerges from the ethos of designing for a difference, addressing a crucial pain point in the music industry. The app aims to streamline communication for musicians, enabling the users to effortlessly navigate messages from various platforms and efficiently coordinate local and global show bookings with fellow artists across the United States. Terraphilium's vision for Ensemble Planner is to provide a solution and think innovatively, pushing the boundaries of conventional problem-solving.
Terraphilium plans to conduct user research using informal methods, instinct, critique, and collaboration to ensure the app's relevance and effectiveness. This approach reflects the company's commitment to understanding the nuanced needs of musicians and tailoring Ensemble Planner to enhance their communication and booking experiences.
Recognizing the financial constraints of musicians, the app's pricing model is designed with a musician's salary in mind. Terraphilium aims to make the benefits of Ensemble Planner accessible to a broader audience by implementing a fixed, low yearly price to promote inclusivity within the music community.
Despite budgetary constraints limiting pre-launch user research testing, Terraphilium is confident in its ability to deliver a user-centric solution, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of user needs, guiding the app's development to meet artistic and practical requirements with communication in mind.
Terraphilium envisions Ensemble Planner as more than a standalone product; it's a strategic move to generate revenue for future endeavors, including developing additional products, expansion initiatives, and enhanced services.
Project goals
- Address a need and solve a problem.
- Provide or aid a service.
- Serve as either a native app or a cross-platform browser-based mobile application.
Project Duration
Briefing
Userflow & Concept
Wireframes
Interactive Prototype
Tools Used
Approach
Informal Research
Background
Motivated by musician friends grappling with communication challenges across platforms, the app idea emerged from a genuine need in the music community. The goal is to address information gaps in band communication through a cross-platform app, streamlining collaboration, event schedules, and travel logistics.
Functionality
Designing a cross-platform app strategically prioritizes broad accessibility and cost-effectiveness, seamlessly integrating hospitality and productivity for musicians. Key features encompass location-based event discovery, calendar integration, push notifications, payment system integration, and collaborative scheduling.
Data Requirements
The app enhances user experience with an availability checker for efficient collaboration scheduling. User accounts store residence details, profile pictures, and primary contact information, with the added functionality of importing member and client data for a comprehensive collaboration experience.
Collaborative Development & Design Impact
A collaborative effort involving UI designers, web developers, graphic designers, and content designers addresses accessibility challenges. Working together, the teams guide content production, test limitations, and ensure the app's visual appearance caters to a broad user base. This aligns with universal design principles, establishing a standard for accessibility and inclusivity in the digital space.
Competitor Analysis: Navigating the Musical Landscape
Each competitor offers valuable resources for organizing and booking events, catering to the diverse needs of musicians. Platforms like GigWell, Vampr, and Band Pencil excel in providing event management solutions, while GetGiggio, Bandcamp.com, and Jambro focus on enhancing visibility and networking within the music community. Social media giants Instagram and Facebook and conventional text messaging remain prevalent channels for communication within the industry.
Identified Gap
The current landscape lacks efficiency in coordinating across multiple platforms and managing discussions among numerous band members, leading to potential confusion and a disorganized environment. Additionally, high costs associated with most competitor services pose a financial barrier for many musicians, limiting their access to comprehensive collaboration tools.
Understanding the Users
The application's primary target users are musicians seeking a streamlined solution for collaboration, show booking and calendar management. The goal is to alleviate musicians' challenges in coordinating with familiar and new artists and venues. The application aims to centralize communication and scheduling, reducing the risk of messages falling through the cracks and avoiding confusion in the booking process.
Decision-Making Dynamics
Musicians decide based on strategic thinking, artistic vision, and a desire to stand out in the competitive industry. Key factors include local performance frequency, timing, finances, booking agents, venue reputation, geography, social media presence, networking opportunities, and crowd-drawing potential. Tailoring the app to these decision-making dynamics is crucial to meeting diverse musician needs.
Influencing Factors
A musician's mindset significantly influences decision-making, considering financial aspects, booking agents, venue reputation, geography, social media impact, industry connections, fanbase building, and alignment of creative influences. Collaborative elements like playing with other bands, touring considerations, and shared creative influences further shape decisions, emphasizing building a fanbase, networking experiences, and commonalities in genre and beliefs.
Understanding the Musician's Work Environment
Musicians navigate a dynamic and demanding environment, whether solo or in a band. The diverse pathways taken, marked by the absence of formal educational requirements, underscore the flexibility of musicians. DIY musicians prioritize financial control, creative autonomy, and project timing. Essential to their daily routines are networking and long-distance communication, frequently facilitated through social media.
Day-to-Day Tasks
Musicians undertake diverse daily tasks, including schedule management, business planning, media outreach, studio booking, branding, licensed music promotion, and merchandise management. Their roles include organizing and negotiating record deals, managing content, building industry relationships, booking venues, overseeing tours, setting up events, and handling various aspects of band operations. Meticulous review of legal and financial documents ensures budget adherence.
Context Scenarios for the Musician
Setting: The product's usage is dynamic, depending on the musician's situation. Suited for the fast-paced adjustments musicians make while on the road, especially when booking numerous shows swiftly, the app excels in a mobile setting. Quick notifications and seamless organization are crucial, ensuring efficient communication and coordination.
Duration of Use: Users are anticipated to engage with the app for 1-2 hours daily, aligning with the typical time musicians allocate for managing bookings, collaborations, and communication.
Interruptions: The users who use the app may experience interruptions contingent on their daily schedule. The app accommodates the sporadic nature of a musician's routine, ensuring usability even during busy or interrupted periods.
Device Usage: Each musician is expected to utilize a personal device for virtual collaboration. This approach maintains individualized access and ensures a tailored experience for each user.
Integration with Other Products: The app seamlessly integrates with crucial tools in a musician's digital toolkit, including Facebook, Instagram, Text Messaging, Bandcamp, Gmail, and Google/smartphone calendars (iPhone or Android). This enhances the user experience and aligns with established habits.
Primary User Activities: Key user activities center around quick responses and efficient organization of messages to prevent missed opportunities or critical information that could impact scheduling or performances. The app's functionality is finely tuned to expedite these essential tasks.
End Result Expectations: The app's ultimate goal is to consolidate messaging from various platforms into a centralized space, facilitating calendar compilation for meticulous planning. Real-time access to the latest conversations minimizes the risk of information misplacement.
Bonus Feature: A notable bonus is the contact archive, a valuable resource allowing bands to pull from past interactions for future bookings. Enhancing the app's value proposition, this feature provides a comprehensive solution for long-term planning and relationship management.
ACTIONS
Define
The user journey map was based on research from other website applications and compiled into questions about the user's needs based on environments.
User flows
TESTING
Feedback
The Hi-Fi wireframes were created from feedback from the team on the Lo-Fi wireframes.
design
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Hi-Fi Wireframes
The dashboard button will be shown in the onboarding screens with a callout on the first screen to what the button does will help users move from beginner to intermediate with ease.
Radio buttons vs. checkboxes define behavioral design patterns as context-specific depending on the user's needs. The form layout offers users similarities with other design patterns of common form elements on the web. I chose to use common interactive design elements because they have proven to work and get the information from the user that is needed and offer consistency. Solo members will have a hidden affordance and be sent to the dashboard. Once selecting “how many,” will generate the amount of email boxes in the next screen.
Checkboxes will allow the user to select personal preferences on which accounts the user would like to link. This creates a more personal user experience. The app has a hidden affordance to pull information from the main device to link the users accounts based on apps downloaded. Based on the drop-down menu the next screen would show the amount of email boxes based on the selection.
Verification code will be sent to all users emails so the band for full access to the band members’ profiles. The hidden affordance of this screen is dependent on the previous screens drop-down selection.
Users can easily switch between a personal and a band profile to make the experience more personable and task dependent. The “My Dashboard” would change to “Band Dashboard”. This drop-down will have a tapping pliancy. Statical information can be shown on the dashboard to address main topics the primary user wants to know. This will update automatically depending on what the user does in the app.
The notifications would show in-progress or yet to start depending on where the user is in the process. The search bar would search for the users by name or by application.
A hidden affordance for the users first experience the home screen the arrows will have text to show what they mean when swiping left or right. After the user advances in application knowledge the hints will go away. This will help with placement when making the design responsive.
User has a tapping pliancy on an icon and it navigates the user through a series of screens. The icons have a hidden affordance responding by changing color when clicking.
Iconography is used to easily decipher messaging and actions. It is also used for progression of goals. This creates a metaphor affordance. A pattern affordance is used after clicking an icon, a window pop-up creates Clear Entry Points for the users to call to action on the next steps throughout the application.
Design Systems
In the design phase, Terraphilium draws inspiration from the profound connection between music and emotion, exploring the brain's ability to make music-color associations. Recognizing that fast-paced, major key music aligns with lighter, vivid colors, while slower-paced, minor key music corresponds to darker tones, the design aims to evoke specific feelings based on the user's task.
Incorporating a scales and intervals circle becomes a pivotal element, guiding users to the main tasks within the application. This intuitive design feature enhances user experience by aligning the visual aesthetics with the emotional resonance of music.
Terraphilium's vision for the product is to replicate the ease of in-person collaboration through the app seamlessly. The design prioritizes user control, consolidating all necessary elements within one accessible space. The company aspires to create an inviting atmosphere, leaving users yearning for more. The design strategy centers on translating the collaborative essence of in-person interactions into a visually engaging and emotionally resonant digital experience.
RESULTS
Ideate
A prototype was created to build in the basic functionality, including button functionality, screen/section transitions, and affordances, linking all navigation, screens, and app sections needed to navigate your application to explore flow and traverse the user journey. The results of my work were a high-fidelity prototype with the exploration of UI principles and interactions through micro-interactions, gestures, visual feedback, motion, and other forms of discovery with clearly explained annotations for usability testing and accessibility implications. The app's branding was based on a perfect pitch's major and minor scales ideal pitch. The colors are meant to have an elegant, neutral experience with respect and wisdom through the gray. Yellow pops were used for sunlight, creativity, friendliness, confidence, and wealth throughout the user’s tasks on an E major scale because people tend to pair fast-paced music with primary keys. The app offers a more comprehensive range of edges against competitor apps already on the market. The prototype is ready for testing.
TESTING
User Testing
User testing bases will be in the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area before releasing a full version across the United States due to testing and research limitations during the app's development. Users in the Cincinnati area offering company feedback will receive a 3-month free trial period. Feedback was given to the Lo-Fi wireframes from teammates before proceeding to Hi-Fi wireframes.
LESSONS LEARNED
The lesson I learned throughout this project is that I go to high fidelity too fast because of my design background while learning and navigating a new application. If I continued to keep my screens in a low-fidelity environment, I don’t think I would have had as much trouble changing screens and interactions. This project taught me that many of the processes I have used for years still apply. The project did not give the time to research users before designing the app. It taught me how helpful it could have been if the app had been research-driven. I did have musician friends providing feedback throughout the journey, as the app was an idea that my band friend had, and I don’t think I could have achieved the desired outcome without everyone’s input. Finally, even though I couldn’t get every interaction up and running, it challenged me to know myself, when to stop working, or when I could feel a project was completed.