client
Methods
- Landscape Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- User Interviews
- Persona Development and Journey Mapping
- Process Flows
- Feature Prioritization
- Sketching and Wireframing
- Prototyping and Usability Testing
tools
- Figma and Figjam
- Miro
- UX/UI literature
- Laws of UX by Jon Yablonksi
- Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson
- Nielsen Norman Group and Interaction Design Foundation articles
Year
Deadwax
Problem
Solution
Deadwax is an online marketplace for buying vinyl records from verified sellers and record stores. Designed from the buyer's perspective, it prioritizes the availability of accurate, clear, and transparent information when shopping for vinyl records.
i. Investigate the current state
Landscape analysis
My first step was looking into the current state of record shopping to understand how people are even shopping for them. I wanted to validate if this was a problem worth tackling - are people still buying records?
Competitive Analysis
Since people are in fact still buying records, I needed to see what we were dealing with. I analyzed the desktop and mobile experience of a popular music media marketplace (Discogs), two general online marketplaces (Ebay and Etsy), and one large independent record store (Amoeba Music). I found ways to capitalize on their weaknesses and take inspiration from their strengths.
ii. Get to know the users
interviews
I then wanted to learn about buyers' behaviors, needs, and frustrations with this current state - if vinyl record shopping is still so popular, why are they staying away from it online? I recruited five interviewees who have purchased a vinyl record online at least once. Three interviewees were ages 23-26 and the remaining two were ages 50-60. I narrowed my target audience to young adults based on my landscape analysis, but I still wanted to glean insights from an older audience with record shopping experience.
I prepared an interview script with 11 open-ended questions mapped directly back to research goal and objectives.
Persona development
I created two personas based on collected data and included their goals, needs, frustrations, behaviors, and purchase values, which I returned to frequently when deciding when and where to display certain album information on the UI. Both personas were critical to capture since data showed that many longtime vinyl shoppers express similar frustrations as new shoppers. This indicated that casual and avid collectors could benefit from many of the same design solutions, and tailoring certain features to vinyl enthusiasts to drive their adoption could grow Deadwax to be formidable competition.
Janis represents the burgeoning population of young people casually buying records who don't know much about the market and are not invested enough to dig any deeper. Dave represents the vinyl record hobbyists and enthusiasts, generally invested in and knowledgeable about the market and industry.
- Identified problem statements -
How might we reduce jargon-heavy, long descriptions of vinyl listings while also providing enough information that is industry-standard?
How might we make the album search and identification process quick and frictionless?
How might we make the checkout process simple and efficient?
iii. Tie problems to needs
crate digging journey
Instead of presenting information all at once like many marketplaces do, Deadwax presents it progressively with different levels of detail depending on the page.
feature prioritization
iv. Putting it together
Lo-Fi Wireframes
test, and test again
Final UI Design
Bringing a modern edge to a nostalgic item almost reclaims vinyl records for this new generation of listeners. There are plenty of reasons why people buy vinyl, but the common denominator is the personal connection people have with physical music they can hold in their hands, which serves as the embodiment of something or someone the owner loves and identifies with. Every design in Deadwax was created to bridge or amplify this connection.
