UX Research

Strategy

• Competitive Benchmark

• User Interview

• Usability Testing

• Card Sorting

• Quantitative Research

The main goal was to understand the user desirability of the product, and consequently if the product was communicating well with the end user. We needed to get a hold of what the Papaya competitors were offering to the industry. Why the vast majority of users were not using the platform even after creating a profile?

Empathize

Considering Papaya had 4 active features - The platform Profile, Vetting Tool for professional resources, Genie for career management, and Collab Tool for professional collaboration with other artists - we wanted to understand if Papaya would offer “all of the same” to users, or if would actually improve the artists professional management. Stakeholders were focused on the Vetting Tool as the innovative feature, therefore, I began by conducting a Competitive Benchmark, focusing on their vetting systems but also on other features available. In my point of view, the Vetting Tool by itself did not explain why users were not using the platform after creating a profile, hence why I broad the research to a more user-focused methodologies.

Interviews

I focused on conducting usability testing with two tasks (creating a Papaya profile and searching for a specific music promotion company in the Papaya Vetting Tool), with that I aimed to uncover how user perceived the process of creating a profile and if they completely understood the feature. Alongside I conducted user interviews with professional and seasonal musicians, in order to uncover their perspectives on the product.

Needs

- Practical administration of artists' professional profiles.
- Access to trustworthy digital musical promotion channels.
- Effective tipping system.
- Affordable career management.

Desires

- To be able to communicate with their audience as well as other professionals in a functional way, concentrating their social media profiles in one place.
- To understand if digital musical services are actually effective or a form of scam, as in the industry online services generally have fake reviews in users's opinion.
- To get real feedback on career management from industry professionals, such as about a tour location, new musical project, etc.
- To have a tailored made professional profile, as it can occur that a solo artist contributed to one album or they belong to several different bands.
- Receive tips at any time, without disclosing banking information.

Opportunities

• Redesign the landing page for more objective content, including highlighting Papaya's valid prop, in order to introduce the product to users better.

• Redesign profile creation process, including band and solo artist profiles.

• Allow the system to connect both profile categories so that one solo artist can connect several different bands they are members.

• Increase sign-ups by encouraging band members to create a personal profile.

Define

Interaction Design

Profile creation process - Mobile

Design

Landing Page

Previous version

• During usability testing, the majority of users didn't scroll down until the end and pointed they found content information confusing.

• The buttons of Collab Tool and Career Genie required a Papaya profile to function, hence the button shortcuts to the features caused friction to new users without a profile.

• The image with the QR Code and the "link in bio button" were pointed as scam concerns by several users, because it was not clear the purpose of it in user's perspective.

• The Papaya's product valid proposition wasn't clear and misleading because it is not a musical creation platform, which led to user's frustration during interviews.

• Stakeholders wanted to introduce the Vetting Tool, which also needed to be implemented in the Landing Page.

Proposed Redesign

• Highlight the product's valid prop.

• Objectly described the features, but only login buttons and the Vetting Tool are available before Login is completed.

• Features visuals introduced as the final mobile screens, in order to introduce and encourage users to explore the mobile version of the product.

• The FAQ button is available for detailed information on every feature the product offers.

Branding

Papaya went through a re-branding during the research phase and changed logo, typography, and colour palette.

The new logo included two papaya slices balancing on top of each other. The new colour palette brought a more vibrant tone to the product resembling the tropical and energetic atmosphere of where the fruit can be found. Considering that the colour black was a requirement by the stakeholders, the new palette brought a nice visual balance.

UI Design (Medium-Fidelity)

Mobile screens

Landing page

Menu enabled

Profile

Vetting Tool

Career Genie

Collab Tool

Desktop screens

The desktop redesign was focused only on the process of creating a profile, profile cards, and landing page.

Landing page

Sign In

First step on profile creation process

Solo artist profile creation process

Band profile creation process

Artist profile

Band profile

Screen view

Full page

Full profile page

Screen view

Screen view

Full screen view

Test

A/B Testing

Usability testing

At the end of the design phase of the desktop profile creation steps, the stakeholders understood that a one-page form* would be more efficient for users, as it was previously implemented. They argued that the first step - the Spotify API - would help users fill in the blanks and they would only have to add a few more information after that. However, after the first user interviews (in the UX research phase), I noticed that a big share of musicians used different platforms to share their music aside from Spotify. Therefore, I added a quick A/B Testing to evaluate the most effective path to follow and advise the stakeholders with a fact-based opinion.

*one-page form

Test Goals

- To observe users’ interactions with the feature and evaluate their experiences with the key tasks.

- To identify potential pain points.

- To define the quality of accessibility, flow, navigation, information architecture, and general design of the addition.

What works?

What could be different?

• Information broken in blocks.

• Single artist and band as 2 different profiles with similar design but different features.

• Cards in finalized profile color code.

• 6-steps profile creation, so user can focus on one step at the time while knowing how many steps still should be completed.

• Tip card accessibility.

• Spotify API behaves inconsistently.

• User have more acceptance for the 6-steps screens.

• Add Sound Cloud option.

• Connect social media in profile, for picture access.

• Add in FAQ a topic regarding the product and audience vs. the product and other artists.

Questions for future interactions

• The auto-fill (picture, bio and location) from Spotify API is supposed to reduce the user's work on creating a profile, however considering the friction with the wrong information pulled into our system, Should we keep using the API?

• If we add social media cards to the profile - such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram - will they add value or misrepresent the purpose of our product?

• Will a FAQ with detailed information about our features be enough or we should also add an informative carrousel on how to better take advantage of our product in your career?