Expanding The Audio Experience

Too busy to read everything? I got you here

AMP opened my eyes to the music industry. Everything that went into creating an experience for an audience when it came to audio from music to podcasts to shows entered the picture. What I present here is just one hefty slice. Hit the links below to skip to different sections.

Quick links:
01 Background02 Discovery03 Going Micro04 Realization05 Conclusion

Overview

01 Background

AMP is a self-serve artist marketing platform for creators of music experiencesto connect with and build fan experiences. Artists, labels, and independent curators are all free to access and utilize AMP’s suite of online marketing tools to help creators increase their spins on Pandora, reach new audiences, and grow their fan base.

02 Discovery

The Pick Up

I just needed to piece together all the pieces that were available to me. I had plenty of screens, both live and static, to work with but what my biggest challenge was understanding the whys to be able to come up with something better.
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There were some basic building blocks from the information I had naturally gathered after being a part of the team for about a month.
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I knew who the users were and how AMP lived in the overall Pandora / SiriusXM ecosystem. I knew what we were trying to do and get. I understood what competitors like Spotify, Apple, Amazon were offering. These were some resources I could observe and rely on.

First, Untangle

Now for the real work. This began with getting back to the users. There were multiple elements that led me to confusion. if I’m getting so confused, who’s to say a user wouldn’t? That alone is a layered concept because users were not only layered in their type but also their needs, objective, and AMP knowledge.
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It seems straight forward at first. It’s really not when the other factors come into the picture.
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When it comes to designing holistically for a well rounded product like AMP, my thinking other than developing a deep familiarity, was to first focus on users and their goals. What do they need and how can we make it happen?
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There were multiple user types for this product. I needed to be drill them into my head:
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• Creators
• Artists
• Managers
• Music Labels
• Curators
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This was critical to understanding the true potential of AMP because these user types are all interconneccted, and they're part of how the music industry works not just from a streaming perspective but far beyond and the foundation of how to grow and maintain the bottom line.
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This small slice alone sure brought plenty of obstacles with just this simple task. I simply didn’t understand what’s what and why we have given elements. I just couldn’t piece it together at first glance.

Audits Take Over

There is no way to understand a new or unfamiliar product than to understand every part of it-inside and out, side to side, antle to angle. It is thorough examination that consists of one of the biggest aspects of my design appproach.

With that being said, time to get what I call get down and nerdy.





1. I decided to start building maps  just to understand the full AMP picture at a high level.
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2. Flows were added and then look at every single live screen in AMP for details. This meant seeing what interactions were already in place. This would influence any new interactions.

The Artist flow available for artists to use exclusively.

The Curator Flow. Same level as artists with more options.

Maps and flows successfully granted me with much more context. Next was the fun part of hunting for gaps or inefficiencies. I took on the initiative to look at every element and interaction to identify shortcomings in parallel with understanding how they came together to ultimately feed into connecting curators / creators / artists with their fans.
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It’s easy to say just look deep, but I made it a priority to always go back to fundamentals–the foundation or IA in this case.

The learning curve was steep here. I was logged in as a curator to make it as simple as possible without other tracks or states to account for.

I later realized how to toggle between the two modes but not without noting all the shortcomings in reaching that conclusion.

Looking at IA alone is never truly enough. I stepped into the shoes of a Curator with the goal of creating a program. Little did I know I'd encounter obstacles and confusion because there were no details to define the actions and categories I was seeing. Details were nonexistent, so it was a perpetual "why?" I'd be asking myself.

Missing context and details early in the flow

Missing context and details early in the flow

Confusing element. Could not immediately understand purpose of this format.

03 Going Micro

Questioning Why Things Were The Way They Were

Once I got a feel for where things were at and that they were for, I made it my mission to play the role of a curator. I wanted to put together tracks and playlists. However, there came another curveball. I found myself questioning why certain components were the way they were.

Understanding the flow of a curator meant standing in the shoes of a curator putting together a program.

Stepping into the shoes of a show or tour planner

Wondering why elements are the way they are, here it's size.

04 Realization

Summary

After spending a lot of time examining details, I realize going further would be a dead end. Instead of going deeper into the seemingly never ending abyss, it was time to step back and go into a different direction. One with more potential impact with a touch of moderniity. These are some concepts I had explored for completing the basic programming, scheduling, and organization of audio programs.

All of the work up until the questioning culminated to one conclusion. Continuing on this track is a lost effort. I found the points I was bringing up to be a lost cause due to resource issues for the engineering and development team. It'd make more sense to make use of this time to lay the groundwork for overall updates and improvements.

The Pivot

It didn't take long to realize questioning components and details so closely was going nowhere. This didn’t stop what I needed to do. I still needed to bring AMP up to speed with more up to date UI and UX. It was time to concept. I already familiarized myself with definitions and the various paths associated with a given task. One straightforward problem to move onto was designing for a more modernized and familiar view to manage audio content.

Clearer Navigation

Navigation would be more informative than just displaying links alone. All of what goes into a program is shown and it’s clear from the beginning. It didn't take long to realize questioning components and details so closely was going nowhere. This didn’t stop what I needed to do. I still needed to bring AMP up to speed with more up to date UI and UX. It was time to start concepting.

IA was always an overarching challenge from the beginning for this project. It wasn't just navigating between screens, but knowing what to do and understanding sequence. Sequence wasn't actually too important but navigating the different steps with building a program was far more important. A curator needs to build their program piece by piece, much like legos.
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I went straight for updating navigation. My priorities were to:
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• Simplify. Users should be able to see all their options upfront, so they can decide the order and way they want to create.
• Add convenience. There should be no extra clicks or searching to figure out what the purpose of each action is.

Context experimentation

I continued by making context a priority. This meant allowing for require information to be filled out upfront.The list view was redesigned in an extremely simple way:

• Adding some color to options to introduce more distinction
• Using cover art to make options stand out for quicker selection

Hierarchy, placement, expand experimentation

Some experimentation came into the picture when determining how to navigate. Much debate heppened when trying to decide between nav menus.

• Traditional horizontal navigation comes to mind, but that meant potentially having to rely on drop down menus if the list grew

• Mobile responsiveness is another factor. We needed to account for development in all scenarios
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The idea off tabs to select a program type was another easy to understand way of navigating.
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These small moves I was making go into the simplicity principle I was after.

Simplicity was to be maintained as I continued to explore other ways to expand navigation to include details and secondary actions like choosing what to do with a program. Filtering profiles and programs was also simplified with bubble options rather than drop downs, which end up taking space.It’s really important for me to involve the client in every step of the design process to get feedback and to truly make designing a team effort. I provided Polar with an Invision prototype for us to comment on specifics at the end of every design round. This was also valuable for describing how certain features worked for developers.

05 Conclusion

This is more like "Conclusion, If There Is One" because this project has so many layers and perspectives. Goals within goals. The development and other common limitations mean things won't truly be implemented for much longer than one would expect.
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My responsibility with AMP was to make cosmetic updates and to make it easier to use with less confusion. That meant increasing user friendliness and clarity to me. Always come down to context.

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I handed off my concepts to development. The rest is up to project management to set the cadence and update goals as needed.

Lessons

AMP was beyond anything I ever expected or imagined. I've designed a range of products at this point, all thanks to my consulting background, but designing in house was a different game. One where my full attention was to a single experience and what I was going for when I shifted over to an in-house design role. That was expected.
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What I never expected was to be hit with something so layered and complex with history. I'm talking
more than a few months or years. No it was much more than that.
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Here's what I learned in the most concise way I can put it:
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1. Consider what's happening in the broader market right now and within the past year or two at most. It's easy to just say competitor analysis but that's not much if details aren't taken into account. For instance, full flows, interactions, and campaign styles. This allows one to determine what's truly unique and potential fails or opportunities.
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2. Identify the decision makers, their background, their knowledge and find ways to talk to them.
It was absolutely critical for me to have conversations with experienced teammates. They can see and already know what I don't. It's one thing to comb through documentation, but nothing matches these key interactions.
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Knowing what Pandora programmers do in their day to day and who they talk to directly affected how I prioritized what's important to both curators and artists because it allowed me to step into the shoes of a creator with significanly less asssumptions. That's the closest can get without creating more work to schedule more interviews and taking teammates' time and a direct one on one conversation.
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3. Things can get complicated and flip. Fast. Document in detail and stay organized.
Organization seems like a buzz word. Unless you can pull out documentation instantly and keep all assets within a few clicks away, that isn't organization. Organization is allowing any teamate, design or otherwise, to get on the same page and catch up relativvely fast and easily. They should be able to see what's been done, what's coming, and rationales.