EDM Data House
Goal: Fill a gap for electronic dance music (EDM) enthusiasts by providing an easy way to find EDM and other EDM enthusiasts.
Role: Product Research and Product Design Lead
Timeline: Ongoing passion project
User Understanding | Design Strategy | UX Design | Visual Design
Overview
Electronic dance music (EDM) enthusiasts are a special type of music lover who focus on rhythm and beats per minute (BPM), and lyrics take a backseat. Current experiences offer limited capabilities for discovering new music tracks based on characteristics such as BPM and no capabilities for discovering and connecting with fellow enthusiasts. This ongoing passion project aims to fill these gaps.
Research & Ideation
I created user personas and associated empathy maps to represent and detail two types of EDM enthusiasts: the seasoned pro who values discovering new music that meets very specific EDM criteria, and the casual enthusiast who values discovering music as well as being able to map their evolving tastes. I leaned on my knowledge as an EDM enthusiast and leveraged feedback from my peers to inform this process. I used this information along with competitive research of search functions and data visualization approaches to inform my sketching and ideation process.
Designs
The EDM Data House makes it easy for EDM enthusiasts to (1) quickly search for and find music based on EDM-specific criteria and (2) create a profile that represents their musical fingerprint and facilitates easy comparison and connection with like-minded enthusiasts.
Search
With the EDM Data House, EDM enthusiasts can choose to find music using classic simple search, or they can dive deeper and use advanced search to find music that meets specific EDM criteria such as instruments, genre, and beats per minute.
Profile
With the EDM Data House, EDM enthusiasts can create a profile to log and visualize their musical tastes, and they can go further by comparing their profile with others in order to discover and connect with those who have similar musical fingerprints.
Conclusion & Personal Takeaways
This ongoing passion project is giving me the opportunity to explore a product that I personally want as an EDM enthusiast. Discovering new music through search was my initial focus, and my design explorations have shined a light on the need for a way to compare and connect with others. Areas that I plan to prioritize as time allows include research to gather feedback from representative users and exploring alternatives for the layout of the advanced search interface to clean it up and improve the hierarchy.
My biggest takeaway to date is the challenge of simultaneously designing product functionality and the product’s look and feel. When I tried to make visual design decisions before I had finalized product functionality, my design process sputtered. When this happened, I set the visual design aside and focused the user problems and how to solve them. Bottom line: Have a solid sense of your product’s purpose and functionality inside and out before starting visual design!