Brief
There are many niche applications that provide a service to musicians. There are apps for sheet music, tuning, guitar, piano, etc.. Among the most useful of these apps is the all-in-one music apps that provide the user with a library of music to play and educational resources to improve skills. However, there is no app that is specifically catered to jazz music and fully focuses on the unique skill set required of a jazz musician. The lack of resources regarding jazz and jazz education is fascinating considering how it is among the most frequently performed music genres in a school setting. There is undoubtedly a market for an all-in-one jazz education and resources app so the goal here is to design an app for one.
Part 1: Research
Competitive Analysis
Name: MakeMusic Cloud
Strengths: It is very minimalistic, which so good in terms of making the product easy to navigate.
Threats: Student’s losing interest in the simple UI, even if the UX is relatively effective.
Name: FenderPlay
Strengths: Strong layout in terms of educational content and the curriculum. Progress tracker is great for keeping users invested.
Threats: Failure to compete with the library and pricing of other services.
Name: MuseScore
Strengths: The library layout is simple and effective.
Threats: The empty space makes the app more boring and less approachable.
User Analysis
Age/Job/Location:
8-18 years old. The app’s primary user’s are students learning jazz music in school. Students start learning music around 4th-5th grade and may continue to learning music up until they graduate high school. However the app should also be accesible to older users, as that is is the primary demographic of jazz music.
Needs & Goals:
The user wants to learn jazz music but needs support to stay consistent.
About:
Considering users are young people in the current day, I expect the user base to be higher energy with a shorter attention span. Therefore, their attention will be most successfully maintained with a product that prioritizes imagery over text, has a highly stimulative video game type feel and color palette with higher saturation and contrast.
Personality:
It can be assumed that the primary user enjoys being creative and learning new skills (Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving).
Part 2: Design
Part 3: Synthesis
Conclusion
Considering the unique nature of the app and the demographics of its user-base, the app primarily uses a stimulative color palette and communicates with both text and imagery. Due to the many uses of the app, and the fact that users will mostly use the app on tablet or desktop, the navigation rests within a hamburger menu in the top left of the screen.