UX Case Study 1
Amazon Music Player Redesign
Overview
During my UX Design Bootcamp at KBCC, my team and I were given a challenge to redesign an aspect of Amazon’s Website. After consulting with my team, we decided to take on the Amazon Music portion of the site, as we all love music and were unfamiliar with Amazon’s music streaming service.
My Role
- Conduct a heuristic analysis to identify usability issues in the music player
- Utilize user interviews to understand needs, goals, and pain points of target users
- Employ usability testing to observe user interactions and xperience and recognize opportunities
- Use wireframing to outline app’s layout, structure, and functionality
- Implement low, mid, and high-fidelity prototyping to refine design and simulate final product experience
Software used
Getting to know the platform:
I conducted a heuristic analysis and initial usability test to gather insights on the Amazon Music Web Application and came to find the following frustrations among users:
What users want:
Based on our user interviews, users of streaming services, want to have control is over what they are playing, the ability to curate playlists and discover music easily.
The Problem
“How can we make Amazon Music listeners have a personalized and enjoyable music listening experience?”
User Research + Information Architecture
Gathering and Analyzing Data
Findings:
After mapping and analyzing the responses from our user surveys, we concluded that there are two main types of users that would interact with the Amazon Music streaming service: “The Young Professional,” who loves to explore genres but have their core playlists at hand, and “The Nostalgic,” who likes to listen to the classic music hits and will occasionally explore new music.
Age Group: 14% Percent of users are 55+ unlike other streaming services
In the words of Steve Boom, the music service’s vice president,
“We’re not battling for the same customers as everyone else, For the industry to reach its full potential, we can’t just look at 15- to 22-year-olds.”
Identifying User Goals + Pain Points
Our Approach
How Might We…
Based on our user interviews, users of streaming services, want to have control is over what they are playing, the ability to curate playlists and discover music easily.
1. Provide Users with a more personalized experience?
2. Make using playlists easier for Amazon Music listeners?
The “AHA” Moment
Identifying the MVP
After interpreting the qualitative and quantitative data, we identified the our users’ major needs which lead to our value proposition:
Creative Direction
Initial Wireframes
Based on our user research, we tried to design around our users’ main priority items which were:
• Return to “playlists” or the music library without
having to do a lot of scrolling
• Have curated playlists that are easily accessible
• Quickly add and remove songs to playlists
Creative Direction
Moodboard
We wanted to create a clean and contemporary interface that was very visual and easy to understand. We drew inspiration from various instruments, patterns and furniture, which translated into many structural elements of the website.
We kept with Amazon’s main typeface and brand colors however, with slight variations in hue.
The Style Guide
We kept Amazon’s overall brand colors and logo with changes to iconography using a Iconify plugin on Figma. Our dark mode design called for gradients that complimented the orange logo and UI elements so we added indigo to the color palette.
The complete style guide can be viewed here.
The Mid-Fidelity Phase
In our mid-fidelity prototypes, we implemented most of our UI goals which were to create an interface in dark mode with splashes of orange as the color of choice for our primary CTA. We decided on dark mode based on our finding from a heuristic analysis conducted on the current music player. We wanted to create a theatrical feel that matched other competitors and entertainment interfaces (e.g. Netflix) on the market. The contrast allows for easier discovery of CTAs.
Usability Testing
We sent our mid-fidelity design to users and asked them to complete the following tasks:
- Create a Playlist
- Find your curated workout playlist
- Find your queued music
- Go back to the homepage
Our users were able to successfully navigate the interface without direction or help. So we decided to upgrade the design to high fidelity!
Before
Before
AFter
Our Redesign
What I learned:
Key Takeaways
- Usability testing was pivotal to successfully move through the later stages of prototyping.
- Empathy mapping allowed us to understand content placement which best enables intuitive user behavior. This translated to the need of a side navigation which quickly allows users to curate and explore all-the-while being able to return to the homepage.