How to help music students organize their time better?
This project is caused by my music education. During the twelve years of studying at a music school I met many wonderful, wise and inspiring people. Many of these friends continue their education at the Academy of Music in Katowice. In our conversations, the issue of cumbersome access to exercise rooms in the Academy has been recurring many times. Let's take a look at what the exercise process looks like and what is problematic about it!
If you're in a rush (like the students I designed for) and want to get directly to the final solution – click here
Design process
Understand the users:
Designing the functionalities:
User interface:
Final design:
Understand the users
The structure of the Academy of Music in Katowice
I started by finding out about the details of the structure of the Academy of Music. The issue of booking exercise rooms is quite diverse. Depending on whether you play the harpsichord or the violin, you will gain access to the exercise room in other ways. Why is there such a difference? A harpsichordist needs a special room (yes! with a harpsichord inside 😉). Also organists or percussionists need special rooms as well. A violinist or trumpeter, on the other hand, will mostly settle for any spare angle. Does it seem complicated? In order not to get lost in the maze of these different needs, I decided that it would be best to talk to the students of these different specialities. So let's move on to the in-depth interview stage.
In-depth interviews
I talked with students from various specialities and also music academy staff. I asked as many open questions as possible. In addition, I tried to be alert and inquire constantly about any inaccuracies.
Students' daily routine
From the interviews it appears that students spend many hours a day in the academy buildings. The short breaks between classes require them to be very organised and plan ahead. At this stage, it also became clear that the multiplicity of ways to access the pracitce room generates problems.
Variety of tools for the same activity
Different students (and professors) gain access to the room through different tools. It is easy to get lost in these systems. Notably, to book a larger concert hall, students have to send a request to a professor to do so on their behalf. This lengthens and complicates the process.
Breaks
Many students have about an hour breaks between classes. During this time, they may want to eat lunch, go to the library to get some sheet music or practice an instrument. Physically standing in a queue reduces time for other activities which increases feelings of stress and nervousness.
Communication
Imagine that you are a pianist. You are practising on a piano at one of the rooms of an academy. Suddenly you realize that the piano is out of tune. What do you do? A student at the music academy in Katowice in such a situation leaves a post-it note inside the piano for the piano tuner with information about which register to tune. I think there are many ways to improve this type of communication.
What have I learned?
During this phase, I focused on learning as much as possible about the problems users face. I learned a lot about questioning. One question is often not enough, and the answer provokes further follow-up questions.
What will I do better in the future?
Now I know how important is to have a clear structure of the interview. Also empathy and the the way how to articulate the questions is extremely important in terms of creating a comfortable environment for the interviewee.
Defining the processes to be designed
Cases of use
On the basis of the interviews I have listed all the cases of use:
Personas
To make it easier to empathise with users, I combined the personas with the value proposition canvas. My motivation for doing this was to focus on the characteristics of everyday life and the pain points that students face. On this basis, I began to define their needs. Because of the diversity, I have chosen to focus on two main groups of students: those who have to queue for a practice room and those with an assigned room.
What have I learned?
From the collected data, I learned how to map them into larger groups which is essential for the later stages of the project.
What will I do better in the future?
In future projects, I would like to focus more on finding connections between user responses in order to better understand the occurring processes.
Problem definition
The most important area for improvement
After an overall analysis of the collected information , I noticed in which areas there was the biggest need to implement changes. The queuing process (due to inefficient use of time) and the booking of practise room (due to the variety of currently used and mutually incompatible solutions) were chosen as the most urgent areas for design.
The design challenge
I asked myself How might I help music students organize their time better and stay focus on development of their music careers? For the purpose of structuring, I have written out the design assumptions for this project:
Designing the functionalities
User flow
This tool will have two main duties: virtual queuing and a practice room booking. The creation of the flow allowed identical elements to be defined for both of the main paths and logically linked together.
Low fidelity prototype
To start thinking about a visual flow through the different aspects of the features. The most important thing for me is to show the two main functionalities. The first functionality is virtual queuing giving you the opportunity to do other things while you are waiting in the room.
The second most important functionality is the ability to book a room for a specific date in the future.
Usability testing
Five academy students from different specialities took part in the testing. These are main conclusions from this session:
What have I learned?
I learnt the importance of validation and not getting attached to first concepts. Usability testing confirmed to me how valuable it is to confront assumptions with the target users of a product.
What will I do better in the future?
I would like to improve my remote usability testing procedure. Preparing a more accurate scenario and asking follow-up questions are aspects I want to take care of more during future tests.
User interface
Visual side of the app
Visual language
At the core of thinking about the visual part were contemporary digital interfaces and mental models.
Let's iterate again
Improvements
At this stage, graphics were designed - characters that provide visual support for the choice of virtual queuing or room booking.
The tutorial
From the initial design phase, the question of communicating how the basic functionalities work was unresolved. To make sure that no user would be in doubt about how to use the application I decided to create a tutorial. I looked at design patterns for such elements.
I then set up the content and started designing. In the end, the tutorial consists of three tips in which I included animations showing the ways in which the tool is best used.
What have I learned?
What I will remember most from this stage is how important it is to constantly analyse existing solutions. In addition, I reaffirmed the importance of iterative work.
What will I do better in the future?
For the future, I would like to review more quickly and reject directions that are not worth going in.
Final solution
Virtual queuing
Practice room booking
General learnings
This is the first time I've gone through the whole process of designing a digital product. My main learning is the power of how it stands behind conversations and user observation. Without testing and an iterative approach it is also hard to design a tailored product. I was also surprised at how non-linear the process came out. I repeatedly returned to the benchmarking or in-depth interview phase.
For the future
In the future I would like to spend more time generating ideas for specific functionalities. I was surprised by the amount of data to be analysed in the in-depth interview phase - I would like to be more efficient in this aspect and will definitely improve this in future projects.
See also:
