LADIDA
A responsive website, where music and family come together.
Team
Chelsey Pinke (me)
Jill Moloney
Paul Seid
Mark Kahn
thanks team!
My Role
Project Manager
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Time
2 weeks
Platform
Responsive Website
OVERVIEW
My team was tasked with identifying an opportunity within a given problem space: music. To narrow down our focus, we started by collaborating on a topic map and found ourselves sharing stories about our formative experiences with music: borrowing our siblings CDs or exchanging mixtapes. This led to a question: since music is no longer a tangible thing that people can easily share, how are modern families navigating music?
To pursue this question, we started by interviewing six users (self-proclaimed music-lovers with families) to learn about their behaviors around music and family. We learned that while parents love listening to music on their own, they do in fact struggle to share and bond over music with their partners and children. With that data, we proceeded to design a responsive music-streaming website for families: LaDiDa.
What differentiates LaDiDa from traditional streaming sites is its collaborative features, including family libraries, family playlists (created by multiple family members), and a compilation feature that identifies enjoyable music for everyone (a big hit with our users). Though our initial low-fidelity designs had some navigational issues, our high-fidelity prototype proved easy to use and very exciting to our users who agreed enthusiastically that they would use this site if it were available.
THE RESEARCH
As our team discussed music venues, merchandise, music therapy, and psychology, we found ourselves sharing stories from our pasts: making mix tapes for our high school crushes, stealing our older siblings CDs, or being forced to listen to our parents records over and over. We all admitted that, without these formative musical experiences, our musical histories would be completely different. And we realized, that without the tangible, musical artifacts of the past, we had no idea how modern families share music.
Interviews.
We needed to speak with families. We sent out a screener to find people who were music lovers and had families (which we defined as having at least one child, preferably over the age of 3, who would have some degree of musical agency).
Names changed for privacy.
In conversation with these parents, we asked what kinds of music they listen to, where, when and how they listen to music, but also what kinds of music their family members prefer, what they listen to when they’re together and during what activities, how they share music, and how they handle any "musical disagreements". Some key questions included:
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Tell me about a time in the past week when you listened to music with your family.
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What do you get out of listening to music with your family?
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Do you ever disagree about what music to listen to? Tell me about a specific time, what happened? How did you resolve it?
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Can you remember a time in the last week/month/year when you listened to music with your family?
To see a full interview script, click HERE.
Synthesis.
The team created an affinity map using interview data and nailed down some insights about how modern families are interacting with music.
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Families listen to music at all times of the day and for many reasons, but especially in the morning to get ready for the day and in the car.
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Parents like to know what their children are listening to, either to gauge their emotional states or to bond over their interests.
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Both parents and children enjoy sharing music and teaching each other about new music.
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Husbands and wives commonly don’t share the same primary taste in music, thought they can often find overlapping secondary tastes. When husbands and wives disagree on music, they simply don’t listen together.
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Most musical arguments stem from children, at which point parents must step in and mediate.
Persona.
We took our insights and created some helpful documentation to inform the design process. We started with a persona: mother of the year, Allison.
Journey Map.
To further understand our primary user and determine which pain points we would tackle, we created a journey map of our user's morning routine.
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
The journey map helped identify opportunities that we would consider as we moved into the ideation phase of the process.
REDEFINE
The analysis of our affinity map and the creation of a persona and journey map helped us understand the problem we would solve...
There’s a huge selection of music that families can access, but they often don’t share the same tastes or agree on what to listen to when they’re together.
Problem Statement.
Allison wants music to be something that brings her family together, not something that separates them, how might we help her share music with her family and find common ground?
IDEATE
Initial sketch of Main Interface and Expanded Menu
Though we swore we wouldn’t create another music streaming site, we realized that the dozens of music sites out there all contribute to the individualized music culture we have today. None of them are thinking about music as a shared activity, which is what our families want, and so this would be our niche.
We completed three rounds of design studio to flush out our initial ideas. What differentiated our sketches from existing music streaming services were the communal nature of the features we sketched, such as the Family Library, Family Playlists, Family Rating, and Compilations.
Family Library. In addition to their individuals libraries and playlists, each member of the family can add to and view the family’s library of favorite songs. All songs will have a clear indication of who in the family likes that song, making creating family playlists that much easier.
Family Playlists. Family playlists allow all members of the family to collaborate on their shared playlists. This way, instead of Mom having to create playlists herself, everyone can contribute the songs they hope to hear on the car ride to school.
Family Rating. Most streaming sites have a way of “liking” or saving favorite songs. Our site has a rating system that includes the whole family. So if everyone is making dinner and listening to music on Dad's computer, Allison and Caroline can "like" what's playing and it will be added to their favorites.
Compilations. Because the site has information about every family member’s musical tastes, it is simple and quick to play music that will satisfy everyone. Users can easily select who's listening and choose to either “take turns” between their liked songs, or create a "compilation" playlist based on their shared interests.
With these features, Allison doesn’t have to work so hard to mediate family musical disagreements and she has the ability to find more mutually agreeable music.
Mobile First.
In creating a responsive site, we chose to design the mobile layout first, which we could easily transition into a desktop site later. Keeping it simple, we sketched a main interface as the primary screen, with a hidden menu where users can access libraries, playlists, settings and other features.
Our initial design posed many problems for our users.
We started by wire-framing a lo-fi mobile version of LaDiDa and testing that on users. We gave them three scenarios to test out three features: radio, family playlist, compilations. On low-fi version 1, our testers failed to complete at least 1/3 tasks. There was one very clear reason: they couldn’t find the menu tab (see image below) on the main interface. We had hidden it too well! We quickly iterated on this feedback and created icons for the menu items placed at the top of the interface for easy access.
There were a few other smaller issues we discovered that we fixed as well: putting the track list at the bottom of the screen (the carets on either side of the album art were confusing), changing our family rating icons from thumbs up/down to hearts (users did not recognize these icons), removing the search bar (which was distracting users from our other features), and changing the “more info” icon (for clarity).
With these changes made, our second round of low-fi testing went much better. Users now understood where to find what they needed and many were delighted by the key features, especially the compilation option. So, we brought the mobile version to a higher fidelity using energetic and blue and warm yellow accent colors on a black background to make the album art really pop.
Desktop Ready.
Once we had a user-approved mockup of the mobile version, we were able to easily convert our design to a desktop screen. We simply slid the track list window up to the right of the current song elements and created a second window on the left to hold all other menu items. The album art in the center has room to expand as well. Because we had all the elements designed and created in the mobile version, it took no time at all to drag and scale them onto a desktop artboard.
Because families often gather around a computer or iPad together, we wanted the site to be really easy to see and use, with everything you need just one click away. We did three rounds of user testing with the desktop site, with three different parents.
1/3 testers completed all tasks with no issues.
2/3 testers completed all tasks with only minor issues.
The primary point of confusion for testers was the "radio" primary navigation option. One user thought clicking on the radio button would start playing FM radio, while the other two users understood the modern concept of “radio” (genre/mood specific playlists curated by the streaming site) but said they simply prefer to listen to their own playlists most of the time, so it wouldn’t occur to them to click on that option. During future rounds of testing, we would try out a different label to differentiate that menu item from the traditional concept of radio, perhaps “Stations”. See below for the full account from the Usability Report.
NEXT STEPS
Short Term.
In the short term, there are a few features that require testing that had not been previously built out for the initial rounds of usability testing. Both the individual and family libraries need to be tested and optimized for the user’s experience. Also, users really liked the idea of the family rating system, however the usability of that feature has not yet been tested.
Finally, though it did not impact their ability to complete the given tasks, 3/3of the desktop testers wondered where they would find a search bar to look for specific music. We believe a search bar would be best placed within the “Library” page, so the design of this feature would be tested along with testing the library page.
“I noticed that there wasn’t a place to search for artists. That’s how I usually like to find music. Especially for my daughter, who always requests a specific song.”
-User 6
Long Term.
Throughout our initial interview process and three rounds of user testing, we focused on the parents. But what about the children? Will this platform work for them? Do they have preferences that differ from their parents (Likely!)? How do they use music and what are their expectations? What about pre-literate children? We were surprised to hear from some parents that their children start developing musical agency as early as age 2! To take this concept further, we would want to do a complete round of research, design and testing with children.
SUMMARY
During one round of user testing, our user (50) shared that she loves music and her son (15) does too, but she really doesn’t know anything about what he listens to. She said, somewhat regretfully, that music is not something that bonds them. However, through testing our site, she was inspired to change that…
“I would use it to share my music with my son and hopefully he would share his music with me. I am very interested to learn about what he is listening to.”
-User 4