JamStorm
A collaborative music creation and sharing app
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The Product
JamStorm is a collaborative music creation and sharing platform for full-time and hobbyist musicians to collaborate, brainstorm, iterate on music ideas and share songs with musicians and listeners.
The Problem
Currently, full-time and part-time musicians use a mix of 4-5 tools/products to create and share music which fellow musicians and fans. Also, musicians face challenges in getting feedback on music ideas because of a lack of tools.
The Goal
Design an app for professional and hobbyist musicians to address the need for a dedicated collaborative music-creating and sharing platform which helps them share music ideas quickly and easily.
Project Details
Focus: UX Design | Prototyping | Usability Studies
Type: Capstone Project for ‘Google UX Design Specialisation’
Timeline: June 2022 - August 2022
My Role
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User Interviews
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Competitive benchmarking
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How Might We
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Storyboarding
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Information Architecture Design
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Paper and digital wireframes
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Low and high-fidelity prototypes
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Planning and conducting usability studies
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Affinity mapping for actionable insights
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Iterating on designs
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Accounting for accessibility
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High-Fidelity UI Design
Share music ideas with bandmates
Record a music idea, add collaborators and assign instrument layers
Brainstorm with collaborators on songs
Get notified about comments and feedback from collaborators and sing back ideas through audio comments, just like in a jam session.
Share finished songs with your fans
Upload and publish a song on the app to share with a relevant audience.
Design Process
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Empathise
User Interviews
User interviews with five professional and hobbyist musicians were conducted to create user personas and journey maps. The early research helped me understand the users I’m designing for, their needs and their pain points. Key pain points highlighted from the research:
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No dedicated tool for music collaboration: Musicians currently use a mix of 4 to 5 tools/products to share music with fellow musicians for feedback and publishing songs.
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Many musicians are not tech Savvy: Hobbyist musicians are generally overwhelmed by the DAW interfaces and using multiple tools for sharing.
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Low access to studio setups: All musicians don't have a studio setup to record their ideas instantaneously and keep track of new ideas so they don't forget about them.
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No Feedback during collaboration: It is difficult for solo musicians to get feedback from their fellow musicians on their song ideas. And even more difficult to track the feedback given.
User Persona 1: Niel, a full-time musician
Age
Education
Hometown
Family
Occupation
: 22
: Bachelor in Music from Trinity
: Mumbai
: Mother, Father, Sister
: Professional musician and a music teacher
Niel is a professional pianist and music composer living in Dubai. After completing his Bachelor of Music he has been experimenting with different styles, instrument layering and mastering though his original compositions and cover tracks. He is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist who also teaches piano and composition through online classes. Since the COVID lockdown, he has been collaborating with a guitarist through Zoom and uses multiple plugins and softwares to stream his DAW signal (through Reaper) directly on Zoom for remote brainstorming jam sessions with his bandmates. He believes that ‘There is no right and wrong in music but for creating good music, you need to make bad music first.
Goals​
Frustrations
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Wants feedback on music samples from friends.
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Wants to monetize music composition skills.
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Currently earning through online piano lessons.
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Wants to create and increase his audience.
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Wants to create and share music in real-time in an online collaborative environment with fellow musicians.
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​​Finds it difficult to work alone.
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Misses the jam room experience with bandmates.
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Finds the jam room energy missing in online collaboration for creating music.
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Has to use a combination of 4+ software for online collaboration and sharing music ideas.
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Finds it hard to get feedback on his music
“Online collaboration in music is very difficult.
The jam room energy is missing and you can’t communicate through your instrument on Zoom.”
User Persona 2: Sahil, a hobbyist musician
Age
Education
Hometown
Family
Occupation
: 35
: Self-taught
: New Delhi
: Partner
: Working Professional and a hobbyist musician
Sahil is a mid-career professional living in Bangalore, India. He works as a developer through the week and is a hobbyist musician at weekends. He has been playing, writing and recording music for the last 12 years, has been a part of multiple bands and has experience playing live at local pubs and music events. He is a self-taught musician who likes feedback on his compositions. Building on his style through feedback from current/past bandmates and also from his non-musician friends and family he experiments with different sound samples and VST patches on his Abelton Live. He experiments with different instruments, time signatures and scales and online post-processing products. Since the COVID lockdown, he has been composing by himself and sharing regularly on a WhatsApp group of friends for feedback and collaboration.
Goals​
Frustrations
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Wants feedback on his music samples from as many people as possible.
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Wants to monetize his music.
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Wants to share music with a larger audience
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Wants to collaborate with professional session musicians for recording parts.
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Wants to keep his hobby/skill alive through regular creation and sharing.
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Wants to document his composition process.
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Stuck at mastering and post-processing songs.
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Feels bored of playing to himself.
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Loses track of my early concept samples
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Wants automatic version controlling in DAWs.”
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While composing remotely find it hard to pursue bandmates to record their parts his songs.
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Wants to share song samples with a larger audience and get broader feedback.
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Wants a DAW with sharing capability on his mobile
“Music is like a product and all listeners are its users.
I believe in failing early and getting to know if they were humming the tune the next day.”
User Journey Map
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Define
The Problem
Currently, full-time and part-time musicians use a mix of 4-5 tools/products to create and share music which fellow musicians and fans. With the rise of more and more solo/bedroom musicians, there is a need for a dedicated tool for sharing music ideas with bandmates/other musicians for feedback and collaborating remotely for recording different instrument parts.
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Niel is a professional musician in a band who needs to share music ideas with his friends and bandmates because he wants feedback to improve the track.
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Sahil is a hobbyist solo musician who needs to collaborate and compose with other musicians/bandmates because he wants help with recording different instruments and parts of his new song.
The Goal
Design an app for professional and hobbyist musicians to address the need for a dedicated collaborative music-creating and sharing platform which helps them share music ideas quickly and easily.
User Stories
As a professional full-time musician in a band
I want to share music ideas with bandmates quickly and easily
so that we can collaborate and compose music remotely.
As a hobbyist solo musician
I want to share music ideas with other musicians for feedback
so that we can collaborate and compose music remotely.
Ideate
Competitive Audit
An audit with direct and indirect competitors of collaborative music creation and sharing mobile apps. The audit did a comparative study based on general competitor information, product offering, business type, location, price, business size, target customer base and unique value proposition. Also on the UX of the competitor’s product features, app experience, interaction design, accessibility, brand identity, visual design and content.
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Direct Competitors:
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BandLab
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Soundstorming
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Trakd
The UX of competitor mobile apps was measured on the scale: Outstanding, Good, Okay and Needs work.
Indirect Competitors:
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Soundtrap by Spotify
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Capture by Spotify
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Sound Cloud
How Might We
Crazy 8s
Story Boarding
Music Editor interactions
The following sketches depict explorations of the Music Editor and which was the most complex part of the design. I prioritised an intuitive recording and sharing process to help users unfamiliar with DAW interfaces.
Wireframes explorations
I sketched 5 versions of every screen to explore various interactions of the app and highlighted the best interactions through the red star vote.
Paper Prototypes
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User Journey
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Digital Wireframes
Prototype
A low-fidelity prototype was created using the completed set of digital wireframes. The following two user flows were tested through a usability study.
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Record a new song, add collaborators and save the song in the library.
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Upload an audio file and share a finished song.
Test
Usability Study
Moderated usability testing with 5 users to understand their pain points in the app experience. The goal of the usability testing was to understand if users can share music quickly and easily with other musicians and listeners through the app. I wanted to understand if collaborator feedback/comments are important and value-adding for users in their music-sharing journey. Also, check if interactions of the music editor confuse the user.
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I conducted two rounds of usability studies. Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the
mockups needed refining.
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Check out the detailed process of planning and conducting a usability study.
Also, check out the detailed notes of my usability studies.
Round 1 Findings
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Record and Upload journeys should be made more intuitive and independent of each other
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The information Architecture of the Home and Explore tabs need to be redesigned and better organised
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The comments/chat feature needs to be enhanced with an audio upload/record feature.
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Separate back and save/discard/undo functionalities and have a dedicated button/journey for either.
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Single journey for adding collaborator, instrument-wise layer and user access rights.
Round 2 Findings
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Users get confused with the upload/export and share icons.
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There should be a single user journey for users to add collaborators to a project and assign instrument-wise layers to collaborators.
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User Profiles and Songs should have differently shaped cards. Users got confused between songs and artist profile thumbnails.
Insights
Refining the design
Comments feature
​The comments view in the music editor was enhanced with an audio comments feature by recording or uploading audio to the timestamp. Also, the comments were colour coded and collaborator thumbnails were added for a better visual cue and feedback tracking.
After Usability Study 1
After Usability Study 1
After Usability Study 2
Home Screen
The home screen got optimised further at every usability test depending on what users actually wanted to see on the home page. Also the ‘Add music’ button was removed from the Bottom navigation to make it more intuitive by adding a label and a standard FAB UI component.
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After Usability Study 1
After Usability Study 2
Explore Journey
The Explore journey was enhanced to an intuitive Search after Journey after usability testing.
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After Usability Study 1
After Usability Study 2
Design System
Typography
Typeface: Circular Std
Fonts: Circular Std Bold and Circular Std Book
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Color Palette
The recording screen colour palette for JamStom was inspired by the famous outfits of The Beatles as they appear on the Album cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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Accessibility considerations
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Record and Upload journeys should be made more intuitive and independent of each other
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The information Architecture of the Home and Explore tabs need to be redesigned and better organised
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The comments/chat feature needs to be enhanced with an audio upload/record feature.
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Separate back and save/discard/undo functionalities and have a dedicated button/journey for either.
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Single journey for adding collaborator, instrument-wise layer and user access rights.
Takeaways
Impact
The app tries to make music recording and sharing accessible for musicians who are not tech-savvy. Also, it should become like a song diary in a musician's pocket so they can document all their ideas, collaborate remotely and track a bandmate's input and even share unfinished work which still adds value for listeners.
What I learned
While designing the JamStorm app I learned that the first ideas for the app are only the beginning of the process. We discover actual user needs through usability studies and feedback. The cumulative learning from testing the app with real users influences design iteration for solving real user needs. Also, I learned to add motion and animation to my mockups to create interactive prototypes.
Next steps
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Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed and to simplify the interaction of the music editor.
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Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need.
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Conduct a product market fit study for the project and try to develop the real app!
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