My role:

UX Research, UX Design

The product:

TUNE is an extension of a local wedding venue that allows their clients to book musicians for their weddings. The app offers a wide selection of musicians from multiple genres, backgrounds, and price ranges.

Project duration:

November 2022 - March 2023

OVERVIEW

The problem:

Busy clients lack the time to find and book a musician for their wedding among other planning tasks.

User Research Summary

I conducted interviews with musicians, project assistants, married adults, and marriage candidates from various age groups and occupations, and created two aggregated empathy maps for working adults and musicians respectively.

These two user groups confirmed the initial assumptions about the lack of guidance regarding booking wedding musicians. However, the research also showed that users wanted to browse options, listen to past performances, and filter rates according to their budget before booking.

Pain Points:

Lack of Samples

Musicians and customers don’t have a collective platform where they can access previous performance samples

Time

Wedding planning takes a lot of time that working people don’t necessarily have

Budget

Contacting each individual musician to learn their hourly rates is not efficient. Customers want to be able to filter out the options who don’t fit their budget

Guidance

It’s hard to figure out where and how to start browsing the options without a platform.

Personas

Name: Joshua Garcia

Age: 30

Education: BM in Violin Performance

Job: Professional Musician

Family: 2 older sisters

Joshua is a violinist who performs locally and around the US with a string quartet. The local concerts at Rochester, NY do not have a large audience: however, the tours tend to be more fun and engaging. He recently played at a friend’s wedding and enjoyed the experience, so he wants to find a way to connect with wedding venues to arrange gigs. He has his own website but he feels like a specialised institution could reach more people.

“Talent alone is not enough to achieve greatness, you need consistent practice”

User Journey Map

Irene is a busy engineer who needs to efficiently browse and filter through musicians with her partner, because they don’t have a lot of time to plan the wedding due to their schedules.

Problem Statement

TUNE App will let clients of the wedding venue browse available musicians in detail which will affect the decision-making process by not second-guessing their choices with the sample performance and filtering features.

We will measure effectiveness by analysing customer reviews.

Goal Statement

Initial User Flow

User task: Use the Musician Booking app to browse musicians and select one for an appointment

Lo-Fi Wireframes and Prototype

After creating the paper wireframes and selecting the screens I want to digitise, I made sure to incorporate the feedback I got from peers and the user research while designing the digital wireframes.

Lo-Fi Prototype

Usability Study

Research Goals:

Determine if users can complete core tasks within the prototype of the musician booking app.
Determine the pain points in the page design and interactivity.

KPIs

Time on task: how much time it takes for users to pick a musician
Conversion rates: how many musicians do users add to their saved list
User error rates: how often do users get stuck trying to complete the tasks
System Usability Scale (SUS): a questionnaire to evaluate customer feedback

Research Questions:

Are users able to successfully add musicians to the saved list and contact them?
How long does it take for a user to filter for their own criteria?
What can we learn from the user flow to book a wedding musician?
Do users think the app is easy or difficult to use?

Methodology

15 - 30 minutes per session
United States, remote
Unmoderated usability study
Users were asked to perform tasks in a low-fidelity prototype

UX Research Study Plan

Participants

6 participants (managed to recruit 5)
1 male, 1 female, and 2 married couples (gender not important) between the ages of 18 - 65

Round 1 Findings

Users need clearer wording and instructions
Users want the filtered musicians to have “Top Rated” labels
Users want a menu with direct hyperlinks to the appointment scheduling page

Round 2 Findings

Users want an indicator for booking confirmation on their profile
“Add to Calendar” functionality is confusing

Themes & Insights

Usability Study Spreadsheet

Affinity Diagram

Changes Made

Design System

Hi-Fi Mockups and Prototype

Hi-Fi Prototype

Accessibility Considerations

Contrast

I changed the colour for the musician boxes on the homepage from light grey to pure black for maximum contrast with the white text and light yellow stars

Motion

I added motion animation (with respect to WCAG) to navigation buttons to make the interactions smoother

Assistive Technology

The layout of all the pages are compatible with screen-readers

Takeaways

Impact:

The app provides users a one-platform experience where they can browse, filter, and book musicians for their weddings all in one flow.

One quote from participant feedback:

"I appreciate the detail on the musician profile page. Especially the reviews, since these are from people who booked these musicians before and we can read about their experiences before booking them ourselves."

What I learned:

The prototyping process is very iterative, because participant feedback from all the usability studies I conducted showed me a new perspective, as well as new elements / colours / functionalities that can be added to make the app even better.

Gevher Karboga