Tuka
OVERVIEW
Tuka seeks to unify creative formats through one platform in order to maximize the network value that users create. For this project we focused on music aspect of Tuka to create a MVP which is a digital music platform for sharing and marketing creative content. Tuka seeks to capture the underserved markets of independent, unknown, developing artists to connect with their audience and promote their music.
Team
Maryam Habibi, Rachel Deutsch, Boris Todtenhaupt,
Role
UX Designer, UI Lead, Research,
Digital Wireframing, Interviews
Project Focus
Designing a music platform
Platform
Web/Desktop
The Challenge
In the beginning we did not have a clear path to follow. We started working with a website that only had the vision for Tuka. There was no other platform that allowed creators to share their artistic content directly with consumers. Existing solutions isolate the creator from their fan-networks. Designing a platform that blends new technology seamlessly.
Duration
Three Weeks
Tools
Real Time Board, Sketch, InVision, Adobe Illustrator, Whiteboard
The Solution
Design an easy to use music platform for artists that bring together the elements of social networking and promotion of their content.
PROCESS
Synthesis
Research
Iterative Design
Ideation
RESEARCH
Meet with Client
Meet with Client, Michael Harrington to discuss his vision for Tuka and understand his main goal for this project. Michael wanted to us to focus on creating an MVP for Tuka music platform.
Here are some of the original ideas that Michael shared with us for Tuka platform.
C&C Analysis
We started our research by comparative and competitive analysis of features that the potential competitive website has. C&C analysis is to understand opportunities, standards and threats for Tuka’s current vision of the platform. Here are some of the key findings.
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Every platform has a statistics section for the artist and through our interviews a lot of people wanted to see statistics in their page.
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Buy track was something most platforms have and it is essential to Tuka’s goal.
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Using word cloud concept was not very familiar to people.
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Adding hashtags was something that makes Tuka unique and people are familiar with it.
Ten User Interviews
We conducted 10 user interviews of existing artists who would like to use a platform that can help them promote their music and connect with their audience. We wanted to get some insights from our users to understand their pain points and goals.
“My music is getting lost in this ocean”
SYNTHESIS
Affinity Mapping
After our interviews we applied affinity mapping method to the large amount of data that we gathered. We started by writing all the insights on sticky notes to identify overarching trends and patterns. Here are some of the key findings.
Persona
These key findings from our affinity mapping combined with our insights from our user research, we developed our persona, Jake who is an artist that plays in a band and would like to use an easy music platform to market his new album and connect with his audience.
Scenario
After months of hard work, Jake finally finished making his first album with his new band. With the summer festival season approaching fast, he hopes they can book some last minute shows and increase his band’s fan base in the process.
Problem Statement
Jake worries that their album will get lost in the shuffle on regular streaming sites. He is uncomfortable with the idea of approaching strangers in person and he is already over budget due to the high production cost of their album.
How might we create a cost-efficient, user-driven platform that enables artists like Jake to monetize their work while being able to grow their audience?
IDEATION
Feature Longlist
We created a list of possible features that we can have in the platform.
MoSCoW Method
We applied MoSCow method to categorize these features and rate them through four categories, Must Have, Should Have, Could Have and Won’t Have.
User Flow
We developed two different user flows, one for the artist to sign up and create an account in Tuka, and another one for uploading a snippet to share.
Design Studio
We did Design studio to combine our ideas and critique it within a short period of time. We collaborated to come up with a final design for each page of our website.
Logo Redesign
I redesigned Tuka's logo based upon feedback that we got from our users. They wanted to see a logo with more vibrant colors and a user friendly design, similar to Spotify, Soundcloud, and iTunes.
Low Fidelity Wireframing
We started digitizing our sketches from Design Studio to low fidelity wireframing.
Paper Prototype
We had two usability tests completed on paper prototyping by printing our low fidelity before starting our medium fidelity wireframing. We made changes based off of the feedback that we got. Here are some of our key findings.
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Information about Tuka on top of the page
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Adding more pages to show the concept of search by hashtags
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Artists should be able to select their snippets in the platform
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Add more hashtags to upload song section
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Form fields need more fine-tuning to clarify them
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Have a link and share button for snippets
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Users have a hard time finding sign up icon
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Clear call to action to upload snippet
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Show following and followers in profile page
Here is our clickable prototype
In this stage we tried to finalize high fidelity wireframing by adding color and text style to our design in preparation for our prototype. I came up with a style guide to use throughout our high fidelity stage.
ITERATIVE DESIGN
Usability Testing
We conducted 5 more usability test at different stages of our digital wireframing and after that we made more changes based on the feedback we got from our usability tests to finalize our high fidelity wireframing. Here are some of our key findings.
Hi Fidelity Wireframing
NEXT STEPS
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Flesh out the navigation menu pages such as “Feed”, “About”, “Contact Us” and “Help”
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Design the Download section on the artists page
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Define the Payment mechanism
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Create further logo iterations for other media type of Tuka
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Define the connection between the different user profiles
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Add Curator and Consumer screens & forms