DAANIARAO
Streamlining VNYL's experience
VNYL believes every piece of vinyl tells a unique story — a record of where it has been and where it may go. VNYL believes this story should continue its journey to a community of vinyl lovers and those new to the experience. Therefore, they’ve created a new service devoted to the discovery and sharing of vinyl.
Overview
VNYL is a membership club that delivers its users monthly new vinyl records curated per users' specific music tastes.
Problem:
Simplify VNYL's membership experience to help VNYL acquire more user subscriptions.
Design goals
- Identify patterns to automate the curation process to support the business scalability and monetization initiative,
- Improve users' vinyl discovery journey and
- Educate music enthusiasts interested in vinyl but lack the confidence to purchase.
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SOLUTION
Design solution
Automating album curation process for new members
Automated solution provides ownership of curating music selection to VNYL’s customers and provides clear information to it’s curators for a more accessible selection. Curated music takes the work out of finding and managing music, so customers can spend more time enjoying it.
Selecting next months order
Making the selection of next month's order easier by providing an album selection option through the profile. Customers who purchased record labels through VNYL can also find the remaining tracks to collect or play directly from their own VYNL library.
Purchasing individual exclusive records
Making VYNL more accessible by providing records to both members and non-members.
Adding the choice to purchase one-of-a-kind, exclusive vinyl records through the store feature can help its users grow their collections.
Educating music enthusiasts about vinyl
Before making a purchase learn more about VNYL’s services, gain more knowledge about vinyl records and build interest in the nostalgic experience.
Learn about vinyl through community-encompassing vinyl enthusiasts. Get access to curated resources to answer the questions in your mind.
DEEP DIVE
But, how did we get there?
Product evaluation
(5 applications)
User interviews
(6 users)
Surveys
(30 responses)
Usabilty testing
(6 responses)
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Research insights
01
Collecting exclusive vinyl provides listeners a sense of individuality
“I think exclusives just provide an intimate experience of just having something that other people don't”
03
Enough people haven't signed up for a vinyl monthly membership. Yet, we learned that paid‐tier customers invest more into building their libraries.
“I don’t see the value in record subscription. I can rather buy one and enjoy that”
02
Music enthusiasts listen to vinyl for an acoustic and nostalgic experience.
“Vinyl gives you a good connection between being live and listening at home because of the sound quality”
04
Spotify plays a massive influence over vinyl records and artists' discovery
“I use Spotify out of habit and because my friends use it as their streaming platform”
Testing VNYL's existing platform
Before we dived into synthesizing our research we decided to test the current platform with its exiting user base as well as new user base to understand why users weren't subscribing previously, also to see if the problem wasn't just messaging subscription or the value included in the plans but an actual struggle for users to navigate through the website.
Terminology
Users found that the terminology confusing: “vibes”
Manual curation
Users were confused while completing questionnaires, and employees selected albums for them.
Unsure about services
Users discussed information about services not being presented clearly
All participants in the testing appreciated the vinyl records collection on the VNYL website and felt reason enough to buy into the subscription model.
With usability testing, we realized that the critical problem lies in users navigating the VNYL website for the album selection process for personalization. In addition, their current model requires an employee to select curated albums, which feels outdated in this time and era.
DEFINING DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Core problems that need reinforcement
Personalization
Do not offer an exhaustive catalog of songs; instead, focus on helping customers discover music they'll love.Personalized content trumps all.
Engagement
Create a platform for a broader range of users and evolve with customer tastes and aptitudes.
Education
Equip new vinyl enthusiasts with tools to learn more about classic technology. Build an experience that evokes and intensifies our users.
Design principles and the content prioritization framework helped narrow my decision‐making process.
After understanding what the issues were and defining our design principles, we directly jumped into the design phase!
PERSONALIZATION
Designing to personalize membership
We started ideating by making some low + mid-fidelity sketches that were also additionally prototyped. This was mainly done to get some initial feedback on the concept. In this section of work, we primarily focused on automating the album curation process for subscribed members as well as new members.
We focused primarily on:
Subscribing to the membership plan and choosing the first record
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Added value of each plan in membership cards
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A guide on how the membership works
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Providing recommendations from last month’s membership collection
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Engaging users with additional gift membership plans.
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To gain users interest, we added reviews section.
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Added Frequently asked questions for users to help users in making informed decision
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Integrating Spotify to leverage users' music streaming data to improve record curation
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Personalizing membership profile for curators
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Increasing users confidence on album selection process once they see what albums VNYL has selected for them
ENGAGEMENT
Building out store
While designing the store section of the website, I thought about our research findings and how it could cater to a different audience.
Moody Listening
From our prior research, we had learned that:
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Genre and mood were the most important influencers when choosing music to listen to.
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User filter down music selection by selecting a genre.
Based on these insights, we designed the store browsing experience as a single filter list and added genre tags on albums.
Before designing the store, we asked another important question
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How could it effectively satisfy both VNYL members and individual music customers, when they have different motivations and goals?
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How could we sell membership to customers looking to purchase individual albums only?
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Addition of VNYL exclusive and genre tags to captivate users' attention who intend to have a one-of-a-kind collection per their mood.
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Illustrating reduced member price to interest more individuals in signing up
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Integrating Spotify playlist for quick interest
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Providing reviews and ratings to gain users' trust in VNYL’s collection
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Quick and convenient checkout process
Store redesign reduced upfront decision‐making reduced cognitive load recalling exclusive records and carried a more robust information scent to invite customers to use it.
EDUCATION
Updating 'About' page
I thought about adding an 'about' page on VNYL to teach users about the services offered in a more informed and streamlined way. 'About page' provided a way to learn about vinyl record classical technology and remove users' anxiety before purchasing their first record
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Quick brief about VNYL brand
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Introduction to VNYL curators to build more human relationship
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An area dedicated to vinyl record care in a more organized way.
CONCEPT VALIDATION
Testing our assumptions
Testing the wireframes to see if the flow is intuitive and features make sense.
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But, not all things were appreciated by users, and we iterated on them and updated them.
Before
After
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Users were confused by the ‘vibes’ terminology, so we updated it to be called ‘records’
Before
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Users still felt they didn’t have enough information to subscribe to membership plans, so we updated it to include more details.
After
HIGH FIDELITY+PROTOTYPING+
BRANDING
Refinement
Do the flows make sense? What's missing?
New About screen
One of the most significant changes I made was adding a purposeful ‘About’ page. Previously, the idea was to make the About page a lot more educative and informative where users learned about vinyl record collection yet this is what users didn’t perceive from the About page. We listened to what users said and redesigned the About page.
We also created, tested, and iterated one new flow:
Selection of albums for next month's order
To make VNYL members regularly engage with the VNYL platform, we planned to incorporate album selection for next month's order from within the user’s member profile
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Style Guide
We wanted our product to be energetic and fun for people to use. Although we wanted to impart energy, we wanted to provide nostalgia through our development, which is linked to listening to vinyl in this century. Over the course of iterating, I adjusted the colors, contrast, and font size.
We also worked on improving the tone and voice of the VYNL by providing consistent terminology throughout the experience. We made sure the content sounded liberating, human, concise, and informative.
Design solution
We redeveloped VNYL's website in a way that felt user-friendly and was backed by users' preferences. The solution brought users and VNYL a comprehensive experience that kept users engaged on the platform and brought growth to the VNYL business by acquiring more members in its subscription model.
We cleaned up the album curation process for VNYL users to discover and explore vinyl music and also provided a store feature where users can purchase individual records.
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Reflection and future developments
Reflection:
Creating a VYNL business redesign was my first group project; it was an experience I won’t forget. During this project, I learned how vital communication is in design thinking. For example, my team and I created many iterations of our app’s design. While we all understood what features we wanted, we visualized each feature differently.
One of the biggest things I learned from this project was that some ideas I can come up with as a designer aren’t necessarily the right ideas for the user.
Additionally, I learned how important it is to pick your battles when designing a product. During our ideation period, we devised various ideas to solve the problems we found in our research. Unfortunately, not all solutions were appreciated by all team members, and consenses were needed on one solution. This situation helped me understand how to prioritize the most critical aspects of a design.
Future Developments:
The biggest development I would like to focus on with this project is getting the perspective of the VNYL business owners. I developed this redesign from the perspective of the Vnyl users. Still, I could not get the full perspective of the business leads who would ultimately benefit from this update. If I continue with this project, I would like to see if the business has some key performance indicators based on these design updates.