Overview: my time with souvinear
Souvinear is a startup that several students and I helped co-found in the fall of 2017. The goal of Souvinear is simple: make discovering music in your area a simple and easy process. The idea came from two unique projects spawned by the project leads Victoria Steward and Anisa Sloan. Switchtune was an app used for creating a virtual location where you can drop music into that creates a consistent catalogue of new music, and a journaling service called Souvenir, that allowed you to curate an archive of past concerts you have participated in.
In this case study, I will talk about what parts of Souvinear I participated in creating and designing, spanning from user generated research to UI mockups.
Discovery methods, and bUILDING A PERSONA
Throughout the focus group we asked people what their preferred discovery methods are, as well as the types of music that they live to in this moment. These interviews would eventually influence our version zero user personas, mine specifically built around someone seeking new talent for the local venue that he runs. This would be one of the first use cases based on the foundational data that we would start working on for version zero.
By applying the story and persona that I had in this first persona, I then eventually moved forward with a more stylized and a series individualized scenarios for various use cases. This proved to be useful in pushing the idea that music discovery is not an A-B interaction; that there are other types of users that could benefit from the application’s location and journaling features, as well as the ability to see data of what artists users are discovering.
In version one we would start looking toward a more professional clientele outside of the everyday user. These personas would help move the UX team move forward with several User Journeys devised by I and fellow UX designer Kaitlyn Nunez. We plan to continue building for these user archetypes with the eventual move to version two, as we gear up for a visual overhaul and flow redesign.
overhauling a design
The actual design of the page where music was swapped was something that was always up for discussion with the Souvinear Team, and something that needed to be fleshed out before the Alpha release in spring of 2018. Initially, when we built version 0, we never had a specific design, but rather that when two phones with a profile or account would walk by each other, they would just automatically swap the song.
original design by Victoria Stewart
In the original version 0 design for what we called the Swapbox, the user would pin a song in this menu or in their profile, and it would be added automatically to an uncollected songs queue. They then could be added from the uncollected songs queue to a collection, where you could keep the songs or then remove them. The original flow for this was confusing and not as streamlined as what would eventually be created in version one, or rather the Alpha of Souvinear.
Redesign created by me, for spring of 2019 alpha launch
BREAKING DOWN THE SWAPBOX REDESIGN
The other UX designer on my team Kaitlyn came up with a three page streamlined structure for the application: three pillars of connection, discovery, and exploration. What was the swapbox became the discover page, where you could discover new music that you obtain from other users. In this section se see that the UI has been cleaned up for a more modern, and sleek look, provided by the art direction of head Front-end Designer/Developer Victoria Stewart. However, the design, layout, and functionality of the feature were designed by me.
The swapbox is now contained within a smaller area at the top of the page. The old list has been replaced with a bubble queue showing the song, and how much time the use has to listen to the song before it’s automatically removed from the user’s Swapbox. The arrows indicate that the user can swipe up or down on the song, up meaning to get rid of it from the queue and down to add the song to the users collection. I also added remove and add buttons for accessibility reasons, and a visual text timer as well incase the user is unaware of the ring.
There also is a username, location, and picture associated with the profile, showing where the song originally was picked up who the user obtained it from. The user can click on the song to preview it to see if they if they also like the song before adding it to their collection.
The collection page also received a complete visual overhaul, now with songs replaced with bubbles over blocks. Each bubble contains the songs name, the artist, and a picture of the profile that they picked the song up from in the bottom corner. The collection is also segmented into two categories: the Collection and the Listen Later collection sections. The listen later sections are not actually save to the user’s profile, and must be listened to or added or otherwise they will disappear after the 24 hours they were picked up.
The main collection songs cannot be listened to while they are in the collection. To alleviate this issue, we give the user the option to export the songs in their collection to their spotify account, which they can register and connect with souvinear to listen to all the songs they have picked up from traveling to various hotspot locations.
THE FUTURE OF SOUVINEAR
As of June 2019, Souvinear’s Alpha version was completed and launched publicly at Drexel University’s Westphal School Of Media Art’s and Design. After graduation, we plan on continuing the work we are doing with Souvinear. By starting from square one and rebuilding all of our assets, we plan to bring the project to beta and start testing as soon as possible. For updates on the progress of Souvinear, you can follow them on twitter, facebook, and instagram, or follow us on www.souvinear.io