ConnecTune
A professional community platform that signifies connecting music tutors and students within a network, reflecting the platform's purpose of facilitating professional networking and connections
Team
3 UX Designers
Role
UX Researcher & End-to-End Designer
Duration: 7 Months
#Professional-Network #Music #UX-design
Overview
In this project, we aimed to connect students with qualified music tutors for personalized music lessons through a seamless experience. Music tutors can showcase their portfolios and past experiences on this platform to attract potential students.
This platform features a network of experienced and vetted music instructors who specialize in teaching their respective instruments and styles. Instructors set their own rates, schedules, and lesson plans based on their expertise and the student's needs.
Goal:
Our goal is to provide musicians and enthusiasts with a comprehensive platform designed for professional networking, fostering growth opportunities, and seamlessly connecting music tutors with students.
My Role:
As a UX Designer, I led the research and design thinking process for an end-to-end system design from concept ideation to wireframing, usability testing, and prototyping.
User Groups
We have two user groups on this platform: Music tutors and music students. In the project's first phase, we decided to concentrate on the music tutors as our user group and research their struggles with being hired as a freelance musician, their needs, and their expectations through the hiring process.
Understanding the Problem
Music tutors face challenges in connecting with students and expanding their client base due to the lack of specialized features in existing freelancing platforms. A dedicated app is needed to provide tailored support, prioritize user experience, and empower music tutors to showcase their expertise and grow their freelance teaching business within their circle.
Empathize and Gathering Insights
I started the empathize phase by conducting a comprehensive competitor analysis followed by semistructured user interviews with freelance music tutors. Throughout the competitor (popular music community apps) analysis I investigated the features and functionality of these apps in terms of getting hired as a music tutor. Moreover, I dug into their user flows and how usable they are.
In the competitor analysis phase followed by the user interview, I asked the music tutors about their current challenges to getting hired as a music tutor, any specific freelancing app they use, and their needs and expectations from such a hiring platform. I tried to find out how they engage with their professional network and collaborate with them and how they showcase their experiences and skills.
After collecting the outcomes of the user interviews, I conducted affinity mapping to synthesize the pain points of the user. I grouped these problems under four common themes with another UX researcher colleague.
Affinity Map
Insights
Comprehensive Portfolio
Showing the expertise using different file types incuding photo,video and audio.
Easy Communication
Communicating with students and colleagues
Send/receive files
Networking, Community Building and Collaboration
Finding colleagues and students regardless of distance limitations
Receiving referrals and
reviews from colleagues
Business Management
Payment processing
Students history
Gain Visibility and Exposure
Finding students
Showing the experience and portfolio to potential students
Competition
Stand out among the community
Attract students specially for junior tutors with limited reviews or ratings
Diverse Teaching Opportunities
Holding remote and in-person classes
Setting class location
Organizing group classes and workshops and events
Managing Requests and Availability
Contract management
Scheduling availability
Receiving and replying to requests
Sending and receiving referrals
Define
To understand the user’s needs and identify opportunities for improvement, I created a user journey showing all the touchpoints while using the application.
User Journey Map
Ideate
After understanding the needs of users, their goals, and the difficulty points of competing applications, work was done to produce the ideas necessary for the application to achieve its purpose.
The App Main Features
01
Community Networking
03
Music School Management System
02
Robust profile and portfolio showcase
04
Exposure and Visibility Management
User Flow for Major Tasks
After producing the application ideas, the journey of imagining the user experience in the application began, and diagrams were used to know the complete journey from the beginning of using the application to reaching the goal.
Design
The Information Architecture method was used to arrange the application’s features in the appropriate interface to ensure that the features are located in the appropriate interface so that users can easily access them.
Information Architecture
Wireframe
After arranging the appropriate features in the application interfaces, a visualization of the interfaces was drawn using a wireframe, after which the process of forming the application identity and designing the user interfaces began.
Usability Test 1st Iteration
We conducted a usability study with 6 participants to get feedback on the wireframes.
Goal
-
Can the music tutors receive teaching requests and manage them? Do they find the student-finding feature useful?
-
Do the music tutors find the community engagement and networking feature effective to get hired?
Method
-
Our study included 3 prompts to test (1) user onboarding (2) managing the diverse teaching oportunities, and (3) community engagement through the app.
Insights
Based on the observation during the usability testing, I developed insights and design recommendations:
I. Profile customization
Insight: Users expect to have control over the profile sections and be able to edit, hide, and organize their portfolios at any point.
II. Finding students
Insight: Users expect to review the suggested students filtered based on distance in an easier and more informative way and be able to compare them based on their distance.
II. Community engagement
Insight: Users are expected to search and filter people based on their experience, skill, and location on the app enabling them to connect to specific communities or colleagues.
Main Concerns for Redisgn
01
Map view
02
Profile Customization
02
Calender usability
Design Iteration
Based on the outcomes of the usability test, I applied many refinements to the prototypes and added a few more features including a map view for the finding student process. I changed the calendar view for the scheduling based on the tutor's availability.
High-Fidelity Prototype
We are designing high-fidelity prototypes as suggestions for UI.
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