Case study Gerrard Street music sharing
Recycling and sharing are two characteristics that are part of my life, both at home and in the workplace. I firmly believe that the duty of designers is to design a product that respects the world.
Gerrard Street is a company created its business based on the modular design of easily repairable headphones and without the use of glues saving 15 million kg per year in the environment.
Buyers choose Gerrard Street to make their contribution to saving the environment by purchasing a sustainable product with an excellent quality/price ratio.
The business model of Gerrard Street is based on a monthly fee and it is an innovation for the market.
From this reflection I thought how to connect such a unique product to thousands of users starting from these questions:
Creating a need for those without Bird *R headphones that wants to live the same musical experience, e.g. dancing together the same music through the Bird*R in different locations in real time.
* I am not affiliated with Gerrard Street or any of its partners and this design was done on my own volition.
Developing a collective experience through a personal product as the headphone of Gerrard Street is challenging, so I decided to proceed with both a qualitative and quantitative research .
I needed to understand if letting people share the same musical experience through the Gerrard Street App was a strong enough incentive to increase the sales.
Being a project to be developed in just 5 days, I wanted to organise all the tasks in Trello to be sure to match the deadlines. In this way I knew exactly what I had to do, what I was doing and what I should do the following day, organising the meetings for the interviews and for the prototype tests.
My research is based on 8 one-to-one and 5 online interviews, articles and reviews, infographics, analysis of the competitors.
Once the main competitors have been defined, I have searched online reviews to understand which aspects are specific of each platform. From this I identified strengths and weaknesses that I wanted to include or not in my design.
Among the many reviews of a potential competitor I read:
The infographic above shows that most of the music consumed requires a smartphone or a device connected to internet.
Below percentage of developers that listen to music while working.
The numbers above show that more users use music streaming apps on their smartphones and tablets than they do on PC, with mobile apps having a 66.1% reach and PC 58.5%.
This is what made me decide to design an mobile App for Android.
Audience Spotlight study shows a decrease in usage of music services during evening hours. I saw in the time slot between 20:00 and 22:00 the only available moment to offer a different musical experience. All the day indeed is already busy with other music services.
One of the research activities that I love the most is the users interview. It takes a lot of time but the satisfaction in receiving answers that can increase and validate some ideas is so great.
I was able to interview a sample of 8+ users between the ages of 30–40 and 5 over 50 and two users of 19.
The questions asked were the following:
After my interviews, I mapped the answers of the users to better understand their environment, their behaviours, and their emotions, identifying the pain and the gains of the project.
The application is included in the purchase of the headphones Bird * R but may also work for other headphones of other companies for a fee. This would allow increasing the revenue at Gerrard Street through the App and customer loyalty through this additional service.
This, also, will encourage other users to purchase headphones and join a more sustainable and shareable way of consuming music.
Furthermore, the app opens a series of up-selling opportunities such as a “led light module” that communicates the possibility of listening to the same music as those with the same colour light.
To make the App complete and functional in all its aspects, I have always kept in mind the acronym CRUD (Create, Read, Listen, Delete). In this way I have:
From the collected data, it is clear that users are fond of their own online music services. The App of Gerrard Street wants to exploit these services adding an ‘extra experience, focusing on simultaneous sharing rather then being just another music player.
The sharing service offered by Gerrard Street means that the experience of listening to music can be experienced by two or more people simultaneously.
After having structured the flow of the user, I represented in the AI the steps that the user can perform during the flow, associated with the spaces:
The project runs around 3 main screens: the screen of the broadcast and listen, the screen of listeners list and the list of the music services:
I was able to whip up a complete UI library within minutes with Google’s Material Theme Editor based on the style guide. For unavailable components I required, I built custom parts based on existing components in the library.
Thanks to a single day of code lesson, I learned that with the “inspect” command I can find the information needed to reconstruct a precise Style Guide. Indeed, is possible to know font and the colours used in web page.
Choosing the right icon sometimes causes a flow to proceed with simplicity and speed.
Indeed, thanks to users feedback, I improved the chromatic aspect of the screens that make the content more readable. I changed many times the icons of “sharing”, “public” and “private” mode.
I am satisfied even if I am not convinced yet, but, as we know, the Apps are constantly evolving:
I have verified the proper operation of flow through three test users:
2. I’m asking a user to broadcast his favourite song to a friend (Aaron Bennet) in private mode (gif on the middle)
3. I’m asking the user to comment the song with Aaron Bennet in real time listening to the song (gif on the right)
Feedback
Feedback is awesome! But my time to edit is finished.
I will continue with other iterations, improving the visual aspect and the flow in order to present my beautiful idea to Gerrard Street.
Making an app in less than 5 days can be possible but only after having organised a precise plan at the beginning. Starting from the last step (test and prototype) it is possible to build the previous steps.
Also:
You can see the improvement of the UI in the next article “The interface design for the App of Gerrard Street”
Opinionated content: This post contains my opinions and doesn’t reflect the opinions of Codaisseur Academy in Amsterdam where I am studying as UX/UI designer.
Terms of use: Any information I provided on this post is accurate and true to the best of my knowledge, but that there may be omissions, errors or mistakes.
Hold harmless clause: I gentle remind you that the info I presented on this post is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only and shouldn’t be seen as any kind of advice. If you rely on any info on this post, it’s at your own risk.
Not a professional: I am a UX/UI designer student. This article it’s for information purposes only and shouldn’t be seen as professional advice.
Reservation of rights: I reserve the right to change how I manage or run my post and that I may change the focus or content on it at any time.
Case study Gerrard Street music sharing
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