ROLE

User Researcher | Product Designer

DESIGN TOOL

Balsamiq

PROBLEM: Amateur, local musicians need a way to interact easily with other local musicians living in their neighborhood/city because they want to find people to jam with.

SOLUTION: RJam app allows local musicians to make a location-based musician search and to interact with them easily. This enables the users to match easier and have jam sessions together.

METHODS

• Mind Mapping

• User Interviews

• Affinity Mapping

• Secondary Research

• Ideation with Storyboards

• Feature Prioritization

• User Flows

• Sketching

• Wireframing and Wireflows

• Usability Testing and Iterations

DELIVERABLES

• 6 User Interviews

• Storyboard

• Key Features

• Paper Prototype

• Balsamiq clickable Prototype

TIME: 10 days

HOW DOES RJAM HELP?

RJam does not only suggest to you the potential singers and musicians around you, but also allows you to get in contact easily and expand your musical network. Or do you have a vacant spot in your band? Fill it by having a deep dive on the app or just post a classified ad on the message board. No one can know where a single chat message could take you to.

“I thought to leave a note on the message board in the office. But I could not do that. I thought maybe open mics can work, but for an introvert that was a hard thing, I couldn’t try. I wished there had been some easier way to find folks to jam with.”

These are the words of one of my interviewees who is an amateur/semi-professional singer and moved from her home country at the age of 29.

She is looking for an interaction platform for local musicians to accomplish her passion in life, singing.

She inspired me to create RJam.

KEY INSIGHTS FROM USER INTERVIEWS

• Distance barrier to play with familiar friends

• Better experience with a band than being alone

• Difficulty in finding fellow musicians and new group members / substitutes

• Being shy about getting new musical partners

• Lack of local interaction in the city / neighborhood

MAIN TAKEAWAY

There are many local musicians who want to find music buddies but are unaware of one another. Those people who can not reach out to others easily to jam together start losing motivation and give up on making music.

PURPOSE

I wanted to gather all the insights in a more concrete story. To this end, I used storyboarding method.

CONTRIBUTION

This helped me imagine a real story of a person and empathize with them to understand their potential needs.

Search by location (city, neighborhood, zip code) so that users will be able to see other players nearby.

Search by instruments or musician categories, view profiles and experiences and also listen to samples.

Get in contact easily with the potential musicians without leaving the app, no need to share emails / phone numbers.

PURPOSE

Now I had to understand the steps that a user need to take to accomplish their goal in the app after downloading it. First I listed them in bullet points. But the best way was to visualize them in a user flow.

CONTRIBUTION

This picture formed the basis of my sketches. I was now clearer about how to start sketching and what screens to include.

PURPOSE

I needed to validate the features and the flow of the app. I started with initial sketches.

CONTRIBUTION

My user tests showed me the need of (i) a favorite musicians section, (ii) additional sorting options and (iii) an explanation of the app in the first screen for first-time users.

Incorporating feedbacks from 1st run, I did my 2nd iteration with wireframes.

The 2nd run revealed a key user need, which became one of the main features of the app: the message board. Incorporating the message board section, I finalized my clickable prototype in Balsamiq.

REFLECTIONS:

This was my first UX project and it was amazing how fast the process flowed, with every phase feeding to the next one. I started the project with nothing at hand, and at the end of 10 days, I had a defined problem, a solution, tons of work, sleepless nights and finally a clickable prototype. But the most fascinating part of this experience was to understand how you get a chance to touch on people’s lives. Imagining the projects to come, I realize that we, UX designers, have the opportunity to understand and fulfill users needs, whatever the magnitude or importance. You do not know how many people there are out there that you will touch with the designs you will create.