Lstnr+Design

=Lstnr Design=

Prototypes
Eric Norris - Design Andrew Palma - Design Kevin Van - Design

Step 2. Evaluate the Prototypes
We decided to focus on two key tasks for our evaluations:
 * Discuss each prototype to see whether it is a possibility in principle (e.g., are there obvious problems with the conceptual model? Is it implementable?)
 * Do a task-centered system walkthrough for each of your key tasks, and each of your user types.
 * From the ones that are left, elicit informal reactions and further discussion from customers / counter people / appraisers. You may find that your end-users will tell you about further tasks and task details that were not thought about before.
 * 1) Listen to music
 * 2) Navigate to an artist's profile page

Eric's Prototype

 * It appears that the design is implementable, and all features seem within our skill set.
 * The major conceptual model issue is the lack of consistency with the navigation bar: it disappears when navigating to a band page. This appears to be more of a simple mistake more than anything else, but it would still need to be fixed in a final prototype. Furthermore, listening to music appears to be limited to one band at a time with the current band page layout.
 * Key tasks:
 * 1) Listen to music
 * To listen to a "radio" station, a user must first navigate to an artist's page. This seems counter-intuitive as it does not allow for a user to quickly listen to a genre he or she is already interested in to find more music.
 * The conceptual model aforementioned applies here: currently the radio station being dedicated to an artist page implies music will only play from the current artist. The goal of our project is to get a user to listen to a variety of artists.
 * On the positive side, having a like / dislike option allows for the user to customize the current "radio" station.
 * 1) Navigate to an artist's profile page
 * On the main page the user can search for an artist's profile page via the auto complete search bar.
 * The user can also navigate to the various artists via the cover flow on the front page.
 * The artist spotlight at the bottom allows users to discover upcoming artists.
 * Unfortunately the profile page lacks any direct way to "vote" for an artist, only voting for the songs playing on the "radio" is possible.

Andrew's Prototype

 * This prototype also appears to be implementable, however it may be difficult to have the persistent music player. We believe this could be feasible either through iframes (hopefully not) or AJAX magic.
 * It is unclear to the user what happens when music is played through an artist's profile page, as music may be playing on the Lstnr radio. There is no clear conceptual model on how that would effect the "radio" experience.
 * Key tasks:
 * 1) Listen to music
 * Listening to music is possible throughout the entire website thanks to the persistent player at the top of the page - something we all agree is a great feature.
 * It is not obvious how the user can switch between genres on the "radio", however this could be alleviated by having a dedicated page to navigating the "radio"
 * 1) Navigate to an artist's profile page
 * A user can navigate to an artist's profile page via the "Who to check out" section on the front page, similar to Eric's prototype.
 * They can also search for artists using the search function at the top.
 * Once on the artist page, a user can easily view upcoming shows, information about the band, etc.
 * It has a "Become a Fan" button to show your support for the artist

Kevin's Prototype

 * Once again, the prototype seems implementable. There do not appear to be any major roadblocks to developing this.
 * The scroll bar on the middle pane presents issues for a conceptual model as the user would not expect only the middle pane to scroll while the left and right columns stay still.
 * Key tasks:
 * 1) Listen to music
 * To listen to music in this prototype, the user will click on the “Radio” link at the top of the page or, from the main page, jump to a Favorited station.
 * Once on the "Radio" page, the user can easily modify what they are listening to.
 * The "Like" button on the top below the music player is great, and commands attention from the user
 * 1) Navigate to an artist's profile page
 * The user can search for artists that they know on the left panel
 * They can also browse for artists using the "Browse Artists" link in the navigation bar
 * Users are also introduced to new artists on the front page in the "We think you might like section" or "Popular this week"

Step 3. Reconsider priorities, and make a decision
Done.

Step 4. Refinement
[|Refined Home Page] [|Refined Band Page] [|Refined Radio Page]

We decided to stick with Andrew's prototype as the base for our design, as we all agreed the persistent music player best achieves our goal of the project. We modified the player to now include "Like" and "Dislike" buttons for user customization. Additionally, we believe we rectified the issue with the conceptual model on his Artist Page by changing the "Music" section to add music to the radio, rather than interrupt it. The front page now uses cover flow for the popular bands rather than an array of band images to give a prettier feel for navigating artists. Finally, we added a dedicated "Radio" page (borrowing from Kevin's design) to fix the issue with being able to change the music now playing via the persistent player.