A SaaS platform solution for music professionals’ careers and resources.
As an artist in the music industry, it is challenging to find reliable professional resources and career-focused services. There are close to no digital spaces where an artist can do professional networking, as well as career and resource management. Papaya is a platform for artists who look toward propelling their career in the music industry having all the necessary tools in the palm of their hands.
Papaya offers an AI-powered tool to assist in smart business choices and connects artists worldwide with appropriate service providers according to their demands. The focus is on the human side of the career assistance the artist requires, which values the user's reassurance and trust towards the company.
I conducted research on different methodologies, implemented design systems and UI design under preapproved branding requirements, and I am responsible for communicating and negotiating with stakeholders regarding design decisions.
When I entered the product team, we had users signing up for the platform, but only a handful of these users were actually using and exploring our tools. The stakeholders also wanted to validate if the platform's available tools were demanded by the artists, or if we should go towards a different path.
Another topic of concern was trust between the users and the company, some online music services had a bad reputation for the lack of trust from their users. In this light, Papaya seeks to meet music professionals' needs, while strengthening the band's presence among users.
Considering music is part of basically everyone's daily life, the professional context of it was foreign to me. Moreover, I wanted to understand the user's desirability of the product and evaluate the market value of Papaya. In this context, I decided to employ the Design Thinking model in the project, especially considering the first step (Empathize) would allow me to dive into the user's perspective of the product.
It is human nature to assume obvious issues when something doesn't work right, such as if the water is not going down the drain, the pipe is probably clogged. Users probably didn't understand the tasks they needed to perform in order to use the platform, which led them to just stop using it or create an incomplete profile. To avoid this word - probably - I dove into research methodologies, mainly quality methodologies and interviews because I wanted to get a hold of the user's behavioural patterns, but also some quantitative as well - such as the monitoring of the platform Clarity data.
The UX Research results in general defined great business insights, which required some redesigns in some tools and processes in the platform. Papaya also went through a rebranding and I have been developing the design systems requirements after the preapproved visuals.
Competitive Benchmark
User Interview
Usability Testing
Card Sorting
Quantitative Research
The main goal was to understand the user desirability of the product. We needed to get a hold of what the Papaya competitors were offering to the industry. We aimed for a good comprehension of how the users actually perceived the product, and uncover why the vast majority of users were not using the platform even after creating a profile.
