Guitar Center - Responsive Site 

G - Minor

Overview

G-Minor was a 2-week long project for Guitar Center. We barely slept. They sought to have a digital presence that helped musicians collaborate.

We ended up with a clickable prototype; designed for web use, and specifically responsive and sized for mobile.

This was a group project; each of us was responsible for all phases: research, wireframes, prototyping and the design of the project, but the in-person and in-context research and personas became one among many of my individual leadership roles. 

 

SKILLS and MEthods:

(in relative order)

  • Research
  • Survey Design
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Interviewing
  • Design Studio 
  • Wire Framing
  • Empathy Mapping
  • User Personas
  • Usability Testing
  • Paper Prototyping
  • Mockups
  • Digital and Click-Through Prototyping

TOOLS:

  • Invision

  • Omnigraffle

  • Sketch

  • Typeform

Major Discoveries: Interviews

The Pain: wasted time.  Learning and playing with bandmates, who later needed to be replaced is like hard work undone and time wasted.

Now theres pressure to find a good match and win back time

"How do you find someone with whom you can make art together?  How can you trust the classifieds?"

 

Problem Statement

Musicians lack a comfortable or efficient way to find other musicians they've never met before to collaborate with -especially in new places. They waste time when they cannot learn more about each others' creative work styles before they meet in person.  

More Discoveries:

What is the point of using a network if no one is filling out profiles?

The most valuable digital networks to us are those where most users have completed profiles. We want the most richly informative profiles because we can get the information we need about others...

(Left) A snap from part of a whiteboarding exercise based findings from interviews and surveys) 

We found there were certain hang ups:

1. General discomfort with meeting strangers and wanting to "screen" and

2. That other networks for musicians were ineffective because most users didn't       fill out their profile information.   

 

"Its hard [to replace bandmates]. A lot of times its sketchy to meet up with strangers, and you really need to know if you can vibe together in person and not waste time"

- Tom, User Interview # 8

We conducted competitive analyisis to find what works...

(click to enlarge)

Peer Pressure. 

When users were made to believe that most people had completed their profile, they were more motivated to complete theirs as well.

 

Solution Statement:

Create an information-rich music network that allows users to search by specific criteria, register/login, build a profile that reflects their style and personality, share their music, and collaborate with other artists via messaging, all within a responsive website. 

Minimum Viable Products

  • Search/Browse
  • View profiles and listen to artist tracks and music samples 
  • Message musicians
  • Profile registration and account views - with infographic
  • visuals to guide and encourage profile completion

 

How the action flow goes: 

I quickly sketched out rough ideas for the flow and screens. It's easier to work in a rough, simple format like this early on.

This was also how we established our design style guide for when we split up to sketch wireframes.

Screen Iterations

(Click to enlarge)

We tested each step of the way

 

Iterations: Before & After

We tested using the paper prototypes first to find errors. (Click to enlarge)

Afterthoughts and Takeaways

The form filling process is a tough one. Building profiles is difficult on a mobile device. More research and testing is needed to discover at what point users abandon a task on mobile versus computer. A native app accompaniment may be the best next step. 

  • Turns out, I'm a big fan of the lean process and work sprints
  • I was surprised to be wrong about the form, but happy that we caught it early
  • Contextual inquiry techniques and user interview techniques were a plus
  • The pros and cons of teamwork and how to maximize our outcomes
  • Holding off on moving to high fidelity for as long as possible is a great idea; it saves time later