The project
A redesign of an existing web app for a stakeholder. The app lets users find songs and play them with a guitar.
My role
As the only designer, I reshaped the feature roadmap through competitor analysis, surveys, user interviews and usability testing. I ran field research, user interviews and user testing, analysed and organised the findings, and created wireframes, a UI kit, visual designs and prototypes.
Goal: redesign the existing system with minimal changes to its functionality, in line with users' needs.
Vision
I started with a stakeholder interview to understand their vision and expectations. Some of the questions I asked:
- What is your vision of the product?
- What are the business goals?
- What would a successful outcome look like to you?
- Who are your customers at the moment?
- Who are the key competitors, and what worries you about them?
A product analysis then showed the app's weaknesses, and a field analysis gave a quick overview of the market.
The app before the redesign
Research
Competitor analysis
I analysed five direct competitors. The features they commonly offered were viewing chords, chords with lyrics, auto-scroll, changing key, adjusting font size, and extras like sharing, reporting errors and adding favourites.
Survey
Before interviewing users, I ran a survey to understand the target audience, the devices they use and the products they use most.
The audience turned out to be young people who like playing guitar, and their favourite sites were Amdm, MyChords and Ultimate Guitar.
User interviews
Interviews confirmed that people use these apps mainly to find a song and play it easily on guitar, and that the competitor features really do matter to them. We agreed with the stakeholder to implement those features.
Ideate
From the interviews and survey I built a primary persona covering the most common needs and pain points. It helped me prioritise features and persuade the stakeholder of the chosen approach.
Design and prototype
I moved from wireframes to a UI kit, then to visual designs and clickable prototypes for both mobile and desktop.
Main page
Song page
Other screens
Track
Main insights from user testing:
- Users found the app simple and had no trouble finding songs or adding them to favourites
- The main issue was finding the Create Song button, which sat on the Profile page. We moved it to the main screen
- Some users wanted to save a song as a draft if they started creating one but didn't want to finish it yet
Conclusions
This project confirmed again that user research is a crucial part of product development. It helped me find features missing from the original app and check whether everything competitors offered actually mattered to users. It also made it much easier to persuade the client to add or drop features, because the decisions were backed by research.
Next steps
- Add auto-scroll
- Add a metronome to help with rhythm
- Add a tuner for tuning instruments
- Let users save songs as drafts
- Add a social side, so users can connect with friends, see their songs and follow their progress
