Gwen Jewiss

Shazam Background:

Shazam is a musical discovery app that has been around since the 1980s. Originally developed in England, as “2580”, It launched in the US in 2002, and has grown to have a following of 100 million monthly users. Currently, Shazam connects to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, & WhatsApp.

Ideation:

Although Shazam had partnered with many other social media platforms in the past, they now want to create a community within their app. How the newly formed community developed was not predetermined, rather, it was discovered by ideation on our part, as well as, from the feedback we received from Users.

Other options considered include:
- a dating option

- ways to connect for gigs

- concert photo sharing

Some of these may be added as future features

Prescreener Survey Responses:

From a survey I developed, we selected Users for interviews. Some of the considerations included, a dating feature, flashmobs, a way to gather groups to attend events, & trivia about artists and their work.

From the User Interviews, we discovered that for those into very new and/or obscure music, finding friends who share the same taste is a big challenge. Since Shazam is a ‘discovery’ app, we wanted to take advantage of that feature, allowing Users to discover & connect with one another based upon their shared musical tastes.

Something unexpected, was that even for making new friends based upon musical tastes, Users indicated that seeing profile pictures was desired.

-Survey Responses

User Flow Research & Ideation:

Based upon our research, we determined that a typical User is a young urban male, who is active on social media, spends a great deal of time listening to music, and discovering new music. Like most of us, they are overwhelmed by the number of apps out there, so would be more likely to make use of a new feature on something they already use, rather than to add yet another app. They often attend live shows, meeting up there with friends, or making new ones. Being able to make connections based upon shared musical tastes could help grow their social community & their knowledge of new music.

Wireframes:

We did several wireframe iterations based upon a couple of rounds of User Testing, as well as, based upon the competitive research and the heuristic research & analysis.

• Eliminated a secondary home page/dashboard based upon User confusion & comments

• Modified most buttons to have icons rather than text

• Eliminated “Fans” from Navigation Bar, in favor of just the button

• Added link to ticket purchasing sites

Video of Interactive Prototype:

Users were recorded testing a mockup of the app.

The sequence instructions were to find an upcoming local performance, find another fan, chat with them about the show, and return to the home screen.

We did make further modifications based upon tests.

Annotations to developer team:

Annotations of s sample screen provided to show font, image & button data and file loctions.

Next Steps:

The Next Steps presented as part of our slide deck indicate the more requested additions to be added in a later release. In addition, reflections for team members include-

Although as a team, we discussed growth goal for this project, as time went on, we reverted to the areas where we each felt more comfortable, & could expedite the project development & completion.

The importance of a Communication Plan & Check-ins was seen, as we were in separate locations, and often consumed by SXSW or other non-project obligations.