A 10’ Music Experience
The Story So Far
At DIRECTV, a few years ago, my UX group was in the process of defining their internship program. I was selected as the mentor to kick off this program. The only requirement that I was given was that at the end, the leadership would like to see a functioning prototype (and not a presentation deck).
We paired the UX intern with an Engineering intern to go beyond static images and breath life into design. Early on, the intern expressed a strong interest in Music, and that kickstarted this effort…
Background Research
To better the understand the landscape, we started off with a competitive research. This included best-of-breed music experiences (ranging from streaming services, online radio stations, music recognization experiences, music video platforms, to name a few).
User Interviews
Due to resource constraints, we conducted some scrappy DIY user interviews to build empathy for the user and to understand trends in music consumption.
Research & Provocations
We then synthesized our findings into the following two provocations…
How might we play to DIRECTV’s core strengths (of the video centric experience) and yet deliver moments of deep engagement for fans of music?
Socially, how might we extend this experience beyond TV, since music is typically consumed on mobile and other 3rd party devices.
The Aha! Moment
We zeroed down on the fundamental fact that discovering music that is embedded in DIRECTV’s content (shows, movies, concert footage and sporting events) is an unmet need.
And while the users can perform this task via their smartphones, it’s a cumbersome process that involves multiple steps, and isn’t particularly a delightful or visually engaging.
User Stories
We drew out some user stories to see how this could fit into user’s every day life.
Whiteboard
We used this as our core concept and started whiteboarding an experience that could, at the press of a button, identify the music embedded within the video content.
Information Architecture & Wireframes
We then did a light level of UX documentation (site map, flows, wireframes) with the intent of creating a working prototype and testing the usability of the entire experience.
Final Design
After rounds of testing and iteration, this is how the final design manifested itself...
Extending the Experience
We then extended this experience into a portal of video-based musical content (musicals, concert footage, talk shows with musical guests…) that is available via DIRECTV as well as via third party providers.
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