Uncovered Flow
The prompt for this project was to come up with a product that inspires the discovery of new rap music. Before getting started on the design, I approached the task by defining the why, the who, and the what.
Why
To define the why, I placed emphasis on the word ‘inspires’ provided to me in the prompt. I spent some time evaluating what that means for users and I realized that inspiration can really vary person-to-person, so I decided that the experience for the user needed to be very personalized. Therefore, the why for this project was to help users of all kinds feel inspired in their personal discovery of new rap music.
Who
Defining the who for this was fairly simple— this product is for music listeners. Listeners would include both rap fans and people who like music, but don’t currently listen to rap. However easy to define this, a small detail about these particular users is that both music listener groups would have a desire to broaden their musical horizons in the rap genre.
What
Also provided in the task description, I knew I would be designing an Android app that’s a paid application, but would also offer a free option. Prior to designing anything, I established that the app interface wouldn’t change dependent on the paid versus free version— the difference for users with the free option, would be that they are served audio ads occasionally.
Process: Research
As I made it to this stage, I knew two things needed to be addressed. First, I knew that my knowledge of rap music was lacking, so I needed to understand the genre more before getting started. Second, I knew that I needed to prioritize the personalized experience I defined earlier and that users would be entering with different music tastes, so I researched rap sub-genres.
Process: Organization
I put the 22 sub-genres I learned about on sticky notes on the wall and quickly realized it would be nearly impossible to address all sub-genres when users are entering the app. I decided that if I could create categories based on similarities in the sub-genres, that would make presenting these different kinds of rap music to users much easier. I was able to put all 22 sub-genres into one of six groups— trap, new school, old school, southern US hip-hop, blended genres, and international.
Solution
I used these sub-genre groups to develop a five-question onboarding process. These questions would help place the user with a new song and artist based on the information they provided to the app before landing on the streaming experience.
