New methods to the so-called madness
UX Research Strategies for Music Business Project Management & Experiential Product Design.
Lately, I’ve been pontificating on the ways that design and technology can help enhance the artist-fan relationship and hopefully create more sustainability. To do so, I’ve been looking at practices in the music industry through the lens of user experience design.
Why Is User Experience Research Import to a Music Projects Management and/or Product Design?
Many creators (artists, musicians, etc) have thoughts about their audience, fans, and users, and most of these thoughts have been gleaned from engaging in the industry for some time. However, assumptions can be dangerous if treated as facts. Thus earlier models of designing for human consumption are evolving to incorporate new insights into the artist-fan relationship by utilizing User Experience Research and Design.
In the last decade, this newer approach to testing has developed to incorporate iterative cycles of launching phases divided into short chunks of time called sprints. During each sprint, small increments of work, or milestones, are assessed on an ongoing basis. This gives designers more opportunities to implement opportunities based on consistent feedback and research findings.
Since user experience is about catering to a music product design to best address user needs, then user experience research is all about understanding a person’s behavior, needs, and motivations within the context of the experience of interacting with a product. Adding user research observation techniques, task analysis, and feedback methodologies informs the design decisions and ensures that the artist is meeting, and hopefully exceeding users’ expectations of the experience.
Artists and music, professionals are fueled by a passion to make music. Those who are successful are often able to attract other creative professionals who turn that art and music into products to create a living in the music business. Doing so usually requires great financial and personal risk. So artists use innovation to their advantage. To increase chances for success in today’s music business, an artist needs to have a product, be able to distribute that product, sell the product, market and promote the product, and fund the entire project.
Successful music artists offer music products, experiences, and systems that connect strongly to their audience–strongly enough that they want to both buy the products and further support the artist by attending events and performances. In this sense, a successful product is one that is sold. The core product produced by music artists is songs and their performances. Then those songs and performances are recorded and sold as music products: singles, EPs, albums, CDs Vinyl, downloads, streams, videos, concert tickets, and even intellectual property to license for another use such as other recorded covers, tv shows, movies, video games, and commercials. These music products are what generate income.
It has been mentioned that the measure of music business success hinges on music product sales, however, for music to sell, it must first connect with consumers. The musical experience about the relationship shared between the creator and the audience. If music is thought of in terms of creating communicative products, experiences, and systems with which to converse and/or engage, it takes the linear transmission of a message and replaces it with the expectation of participation and communication. Thus, once the music is released into the world, listeners including fans, labels, publishers, and blogs provide feedback. It is also these users who can provide insights to improve the experience with the music product during the design process.
The completely collaborative communication and relationships facilitated by and enacted on the Internet have changed not only how audiences interact, but also the importance of the role itself. The audience has become central to contemporary communication, the constant exploration and development of relationships with people — whether fictional heroes, politicians, a micro-blogger on the other side of the planet, or anyone else — a striking demonstration of changing attitudes and communicative practices. It is this contemporary focus on audience and communication that requires a reframing of cultural study, an alternative approach that seeks the understanding of art in terms of relationships.
An artist will lose potential sales if a music product, project, or system, can not be discovered or accessed by users. The barriers to distribution that existed a decade ago have diminished, and digital formats, downloads, and streaming services have changed accessibility for distribution in the music industry which allows more music artists to compete for attention. Thus marketing becomes increasingly important in creating awareness around an artist and/or a music project.
Standing out, getting noticed, and getting heard in an increasingly crowded marketplace may be the biggest challenges in today’s music industry. Effective, targeted marketing and promotional campaigns with branded content and products will help separate an artist from a homogenous crowd. Today numerous music blogs assist with publicity campaigns so related visual design elements are an important consideration to further attract attention. Social media provides artists with a direct connection to fans and followers not only as receivers but as co-collaborators in an increasingly changing relationship. Now, more than ever, it’s important for the users to not only hear the artists’ creations but also for the artists to hear their users’ needs, frustrations, motivations, and expectations.
Listening to users will help prioritize tasks.
It’s no secret that artists’ brand and music product development costs money. Today, many new and indie performers are turning to crowd-funding to finance their projects. Touring and merch can offset project costs, but may also require their respective project investments.
An example of an artist’s development process can start with creating a brand identity while practicing music skills and writing songs. Then she may test out the song and performance ability through gigging, which may require products such as posters, fliers, and or handbills. Eventually, she may decide to record the songs and release an EP, for which she may minimally require cover art, package design, and label design. To create some awareness, she also needs a website and related social media pages. Instead of getting feedback after all of these many products, experiences, and systems have been already paid for, designed and developed, user experience design research helps music artists make better decisions iteratively through every phase of a project, which can then lead not only to more career stability but also save timely rework and expensive costs.
The name and likeness of a group or artist is an asset which value increases over time. The design and development of logos, graphic designs, and related branding are important associations that help define and communicate the personality. This brand identity design affects the recognizability of the artist, music, and creates the legacy!
Additionally, as the artist’s brand grows and matures, diligent UX research can uncover new opportunities for creating relevance and value such as rebranding/reinvention, new products, and related promotional content, and additional revenue streams. Feedback from users can offer new perspectives that lead to informed decisions that maximize the success of each opportunity in every stage of the design process. The impact of not adopting user research into a project’s design and development cycle or doing so late in the process can lead to expensive, if not disastrous, results.
Some ways that UXD research can benefit artist development and music product design include:
- Identifying a target audience
- Defining project goals at the beginning of a project, but allowing the fluidity to pivot based on changing test results
- Investigating & validating brand/identity decisions by finding common ground between artist and fan mental models/meaning-making with a focus on creating transparency through that understood context
- As a mechanism towards making content and design decisions with context
- Saving Development costs
- Increasing consumer satisfaction and fan loyalty
- Uncovering further potential ideas and opportunities for added consumption and/or revenue
Multidisciplinary Research Methods for Music Project Strategies
UXD research is multi-disciplinary. It combines journalism and market research with behavioral and cognitive psychology as well as fan and media studies in the areas of communication and sociology.
No matter which method one chooses, the research process begins by determining the research objective then moves to make a plan, recruiting, conducting the test, and finally analyzing and reporting the information. All strategies stem from observation, understanding, and analysis.
Observation
Research begins by observing, taking notes, and looking for patterns while at the same time being aware of unconscious bias. This ranges from noticing body language and seemingly minor references that may reveal mental models.
Understanding
To understand, researchers must understand a user’s mental model. A mental model is an image that comes to mind when someone thinks of a particular phrase or situation. An example would be whatever it is that comes to mind if someone mentions the phrase “1970s music.” A person’s mental model of “1970’s music” might be different from that of another person, and that image may influence their general opinion on whether music from that period was considered good or bad. Mental models inform decisions so understanding mental models of users participating in a test can reveal shared common ground that can then be used to improve a design.
Analysis
The value in research is in the insights gained that then informs the design. Patterns are recognized while analyzing research that provides the rationale, recommendations, and even solutions.
Categorizations of Research
There are a variety of methodologies and research techniques available to a User Experience (UX) designer to use to collect valuable information to then create an informed contextual design, but they usually fall within 2 categories: Qualitative or Quantitative.
Qualitative and Quantitative Research
2 types of sociological research that overlap with UX: Qualitative and Quantitative. Qualitative usually results in words whereas quantitative usually results in numbers.
Qualitative, or soft, Research generates data based on observing people’s behavior and/or conversations regarding attitudes through methods such as interviews, observations, competitive analysis, domain research, and focus groups. It captures emotional responses and first impressions so it can reveal why certain trends are happening. Types of Interviews include stakeholder, subject matter expert (SME), user, and contextual inquiry (shadowing), and observation is often conducted through ethnographies.
Quantitative Research generates numerical and statistical data gathered indirectly through measurements, surveys, or analytics ranging from market research to use tracking (eye, mouse, scroll, etc). It is not based on opinions so it serves as a more objective input in the decision-making process. Because it can collect a large amount of information, it’s good at reporting trends. Some examples of quantitative research are A/B tests, card sorts, surveys, and click tests.
Attitudinal vs Behavioral Research
Behavioral Research attempts to understand what users do concerning the given experience or product by observing their actions. Some examples of Behavior research include Ethnographic studies, usability studies, A/B Testing, and eye-tracking.
Altitudinal research attempts to understand or measure a person’s stated beliefs by asking them about their opinions. Examples of attitudinal research methods include surveys, focus groups, and preference tests.
A Brief Overview of Approaches
Ethnographic Research or Contextual Inquiry
Observations of user behavior while interacting naturally with a product in their environment.
Surveys
A series of same questions are asked to a variety of users.
Heuristic Evaluation
Product evaluation is compared against established/best practice guidelines.
Interviewing
One-on-one discussions between researcher and participants about a topic that reveals detailed qualitative information about the person’s attitude, desires, and experiences. While practicing empathetic listening, a moderator can ask related open-ended questions to dive deeper into the directed storytelling.
Personas
The creation of a representative user or target audience segmentation based on available data and user interviews. The personal details may be fiction, but the information used is not.
Desirability Studies
Different visual design alternatives are offered to participants, who are then asked their preference. Further insights to see which visuals match brand goals and envoke the desired emotion can be learned by asking qualitative follow up questions to discover why an option was chosen as well as by asking the participant to associate each design with words, either from a pre-defined list or from the user’s vocabulary.
Card Sorts
Users are asked to organize items into either pre-assigned groups or into groups to which they can also name/label the overall category. These relationships and hierarchies that are created expose the users’ mental models while also creating and refining the information architecture.
Click Testing
Analyzing where a user clicks or taps on interface designs when presented with a task often in regards to navigation design.
Usability Testing
Users are given a task to complete through interaction with a product. A moderator observes and identifies frustrations and problems with the design, then asks follow-up questions to further understand the thought process.
Multivariate (A/B) Testing
Competing visual designs are tested by randomly assigning an equal number of users to interact with each and measuring the effect on user behavior to see which variation better accomplished a specific goal.
Constraints & Considerations
Any research is better than no research. More research means more evidence which means more benefits. It may not be realistic, however, to use all research methods on every project, so knowing when to use which dimensions can help streamline a workflow process.
For example, attitudinal research is heavily used in music marketing projects that study what people say/think. Card Sorting could be used to figure out the information architecture of a band website while focus groups or pre-release listening parties can provide first impressions of brand, product, and/or concept. On the other hand, what people say or think doesn’t always relate to what they do. So testing different versions with an A/B test would better represent users’ actual interaction behavior.
In the early stages of a music project such as when developing something new, research should focus on user goals and motivations by utilizing qualitative attitudinal methods like interviews. To understand frustrations, a behavioral method such as a usability test could show gaps within the existing solutions. A survey could also provide a sense of scale as well as context about users’ needs.
Once designing or development has begun research should be conducted to inform decisions and priorities. Behavioral methods like card sorts and attitudinal based preference tests can help inform design direction.
Once a product is released, assessments can summarize trends through data analytics, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, and usability testing can uncover additional opportunities.
Sometimes the research methodology depends on the research goal. For example, when designing an online merch store, knowing which features are easier to use and understand and if there are features users prefer might lead to conducting both a desirability test as well as a click or usability test with some follow-up interview/survey questions to discover rational.
These are only some common UX research methods and potential music business objectives they could support, but a real project will probably be highly customized.
I will be pontificating more in future articles about how a UX/UI/product design approach relates to the music industry and specifically the artist-fan relationship.
