Writers Session
Your songwriting companion
Setting out to redesign an existing mobile application, I was motivated to find opportunities where I could utilize my musical background to help solve problems for musicians and learn more about human behavior as it relates to music creation. Upon discovering the app, Writers Session, I found that the design had great potential but could use some help in terms of content priority, usability, look, and feel. Writers Session is a songwriting app that provides songwriters with a central place to document original lyrics and melodies. Starting as a student project that called for three redesigned user flows, I decided to dive deeper and continue to develop and iterate my solutions after the conclusion of the course.
Jan 2020
Your songwriting companion
Fuel your creativity and capture all your song ideas in one single place
In the original Writers Session app (version 1.8.3), users can capture quick notes and audio recordings or work on songs in sessions. Each session contains an audio recorder, a lyric sheet, a scratchpad, text editing options, and lyric writing tools such as rhymes, thesaurus, phrases, and a dictionary. All tools are accessible in one scrollable menu. Chords and section titles can be pasted into the lyric sheet. While the app offers an audio recorder and a metronome, it primarily caters to lyric writing.
In the discovery phase, I utilized a variety of UX research methods to learn more about the target audience and get a better understanding of the problem. A heuristic analysis gave me an overview of the app’s current state and quickly revealed usability issues to address. I evaluated three competitor apps to learn about their strengths and weaknesses and gathered initial user insights by reading customer reviews on the current app and competitor apps.
To better understand the behaviors and needs of songwriters, I conducted user interviews with three songwriters in a variety of demographics. Each interview included an informal user testing session on the original app, which helped me benchmark Writers Session’s existing user experience.
When and where songwriters write.
How songwriters document their ideas and interact with their phone in the process.
Expectations and motivations of a songwriting app.
Usability of the current app version.
May be a catchy title/word or a melodic/lyrical hook.
A balance between emotional connection, structure, discipline, and inspiration.
Ideas come from unexpected sources, at any time of day/night. It's important for writers to:
Co-writers share files back and forth (e.g. using Messenger or email).
After synthesizing the findings from the interviews and testing sessions, I created three empathy maps to encourage empathy throughout the developmental phase. This process helped me identify trends in songwriting, better understand the individual needs of different types of writers, and find key pain points with the current product.
I began conceptualizing solutions by making many quick sketches and brainstorming workflows. Mapping out all original pages and features in a flowchart gave me an overview of the current content and structure, which I critically evaluated against user needs and goals. I then explored ideas for the new information architecture by restructuring the label, organization, and navigation systems.
Through storyboarding, I could better visualize the user stories and attempt to predict users’ experience with the new system. The process helped me further understand when/where/how songwriters might interact with the product over time and their immediate needs in those moments.
With a plan in place for all key pages, I prioritized eleven user flows based on importance and time constraints. Using Sketch, I then refined concepts for the first nine flows through wireframes.
With time allocated for a rapid prototype and one round of testing, I set out to implement the app’s visual design before finalizing a clickable prototype with InVision. Keeping in mind my interview participants prefer a dark background, I prioritized the design of a dark theme for the first iteration.
Balancing simplicity for quick construction with realism for an authentic feel was challenging for this project. Without advanced animations and sounds, I struggled to see how the prototype could adequately simulate the true experience of complex interactions such as the rotating menu and split-screen. The long flows presented another challenge. Since I couldn’t build screens for all possible responses, I was concerned that participants might encounter pages that didn’t align with their situation.
To address this, I explored workarounds, including providing behavior hints with basic transitions, splitting the flows into two sections, and experimenting with two versions: one allowing more freedom in user clicks and one with limited clickability to prevent content inaccuracies.
I tested the prototype with three songwriters, each of whom were given scenarios and five tasks. Upon synthesizing the responses and observations, I organized the insights with severity levels and listed recommendations for each problem identified.
Guided by the user insights, I continued to improve my solutions. I went back to the drawing board to rework some of the systems, implement my recommendations, refine design assets, and add the two final melody-related flows for a more valuable experience.
I sought feedback and conducted a few A/B tests with users along the way to validate decisions between iterations. For example, I was curious to learn how the darkness of the dark theme background influenced the experience in terms of readability and enjoyability.
