Overview

SoundCloud is a music platform that enables people to discover and share unique, new music from well known and upcoming artists. I love underground music and hearing interesting versions of songs on SoundCloud and felt the there could be ways to improve the experience . 

Goal: Use design thinking to determine the main pain points users face which, inevitably take away from their ability to experience of discovering and sharing music. Validate hypothesis' through user testing of both the problem and solution.  

Role: UX Designer/Researcher

PROCESS

1 - Create Persona

My first step was to create a  user persona, Drew, to both empathize with the pain points and define some of the behaviors, motivations and goals of a typical SoundCloud user.  SoundCloud users, generally, are defined by their passion for discovering unique music from up and coming artists based on conversations with friends and online research. Given more time and resources, I would want to validate with more user interviews.

I created a full persona including the needs/goals and behaviors. Additionally, I created storyboards of our hero, Drew, in his normal commute into work facing his problem and using SoundCloud to overcome it. This is based off the following job story: 

Drew is searching for new music for work today to share with coworkers so that, he can be productive and maintain his reputation for curating fresh music.

2 - User Testing

I conducted guerilla user interviews in public spaces like coffee shops and parks where young professionals are taking a break from work. These areas were chosen as the may be places close to work or places they tend to listen to music already. Hand movements and thoughts were recorded for accuracy.  

8 people were interviewed. 4 of 8 were SoundCloud users. I gave them a set of tasks to determine where the pain points may exist in SoundCloud's platform. 

Scenarios Tested

1. You are in the mood to listen to a new genre you don't normally listen to on your commute to work. How would you go about finding new music?

2. You are thinking about one of your best friends on your way home from work and want to share a song with them to lift their mood. 

3. You are responsible for curating a playlist for a college party. How would you go about doing that?

4. You are in line waiting for the DMV and want to listen to the song you had previously shared with your friend.

3- Affinity Mapping

After the user interviews, I created affinity maps to organize the observations made during the user interviews. I took each comment made and wrote it down on a sticky note to determine common pain points and overall feedback on how users experience the SoundCloud app.  

Then I placed the notes on a 2 x 2 graph with one axis representing is most important to the business and the user to determine what design changes could have the greatest impact.

Key Pain Points

4 - Data

After collecting the data from the affinity map, I moved on to showing the task flow (pictured below). I specifically focused on the issues users were having with the stream function. I focused on this problem because I also knew that:

• 6 out of 8 - Said sharing music on SoundCloud is easy

• 4 out of 8 - Said SoundCloud is best for discovering underground, new music

Because sharing is easy on SoundCloud and it is a great place to find new music, I concluded that better navigation of their stream would keep people using the application. Since SoundCloud benefits from longer engagement and more sharing, this will be an important way to keep users engaged with new content. From the user standpoint, it would enable them to become "the hero", whether that meant finding new underground music for their commute home or sharing songs with their friends and family. 

5 - Design

Once I decided that setting up a stream was one of the pain points of users, I sketched wireframes to show how new users could setup a stream. I found that both new and old users found the stream function confusing. However, I decided to focus on how the stream was initially setup as my hypothesis is if a new user is introduced to the stream, they will better understand its functionality and continue using it to discover and share more music.

Design Solutions:

• Stream Homepage: Make it more obvious as to how someone can add music to their stream
• Create unique follows buttons (as users mentioned "reposting" was confusing)
• Design more obvious ways to preview music 
• Emphasize following other SoundCloud users to help focus on SoundCloud as an underground music community

6- Prototype

After sketching on paper I turned my ideas into high fidelity screens using Sketch, then the Marvel app to create a clickable prototype to validate my solutions. I tested the prototype with six individuals. My goal was for the users to see how to setup a stream.

The clickable prototype below shows simply how a new SoundCloud user would be able to create an account and put content into their music stream. Four out of six testers expressed that it was clear why they would use the stream. I will still be conducting interviews so that I can make a more accurate assessment if I have addressed the customer's pain points. 2 out of the 4 testers recommended changes to the user interface, which is what I will be doing more refining and testing on.  

Thank you for reading my case study! If you want to collaborate, talk about product design, or just say hello, please shoot me an email at andrealuxenberg@gmail.com or connect via LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: This work does not represent any affiliation with the SoundCloud team or community. This is a student project.