DAANIARAO
Research deep dive:
To understand the problem, we conducted surveys from music enthusiasts, interviewed vinyl record owners, and tested VNYL’s current platform. The main objective behind multiple research methods was to understand music listeners' mindsets and habits behind the discovery of music that could be applied to the VNYL website to discover vinyl record labels more accessible.
Research challenges
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We struggled with finding true vinyl enthusiasts to talk to as vinyl ownership, and the user base is very niche.
2. We were unable to interview users who owned vinyl record memberships with any platform.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Competitive and comparative research
Existing products addressed some pain points, but no one product did it all.
Based on how we had trouble reaching out to vinyl owners in our primary research, we looked for alternative ways to understand the market better. One of the ways was to look at immediate competitor space and understand the features and experience that VNYL was missing.
Offers single
records
Subscription
Spotify
integration
Easy and familiar UI
Customer service
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
Defining areas of oppurtunity
Based on the information gathered through researching listeners' experiences, we tried studying VNYL’s current platform against research findings and tried mapping out the areas where we could capitalize on creating a better and more informed experience.
Lack of streamlined information
How might we, create clear and upfront methods in providing users with what they require from a subscription?
Lack of awareness of its users and their needs
How might we, make discovering vinyl music more manageable and more efficient?
Lack of long-term relationship with vinyl platforms
How might we, make owning and maintaining a vinyl subscriptions more appealing?
User journey
Once we finalized who our primary user would be, we developed a user journey that helped us understand how our product could be used in a scenario and where we wanted to take our product. Creating a journey map lets us analyze all the minute interactions between the platform and the user throughout the time the user engages with the product and allows us to understand how we could create a minimal desirable experience for our customers.
“Why do they want me to connect Spotify and Instagram to this account”
“I don’t even know what am I signing up for”
Business and user needs
From speaking to users and business, we were able to define our primary users and their unique and shared problems.
User needs
Business needs
- Wants a one-stop-shop to shop their favorite artists, with exclusive records
- Needs an easy way to find exclusive vinyl records
- Needs reliable and safe shipping.
- Exclusive records are hard to find
- Trust issues with reliability of vinyl shipment
- Improving the album curation process to increase user retention
-Enhancing member experience of vinyl music discovery
- Educating users about the business model
- Making record listening accessible
- Including features to make the platform more engaging
Content prioritization
One of the biggest tasks we started before designing the screens was auditing the website's content. Our earliest design challenge was to propose how we would display content on our home screen, membership page, and store.
I performed a hierarchical card sort with eight participants and adjusted our home screen accordingly; I aimed to understand how customers thought about different categories of content and what was most important to them in the context of VNYL.
The results highlighted that we needed to prioritize store content and provide a familiar tool for customers to browse the content; filtering the music. I then coupled the category ranking with feasibility scores to create the rest of the browsing structure.
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