Research

I conducted interviews with 5 participants about their experience with booking musicians. All participants were between the ages of 20 to 55. Interview questions were:

• How do you book musicians?
• How much time do you spend before finding a desired musicians?
• Is booking online typically and easy task to accomplish? If not, why?
• How do you feel about booking an unfamiliar music band or musician online?

Personas

Two personas were generated by five interviewees. They were fictional users whose goals and characteristics represented the needs of a larger group of users.

Journey Map

The journey map were generated based on Helen's story. The main goal was to book a pianist for the company annual event quickly and efficiently.

Findings

Hard to find desired musicians within budget

• Should allow users to browse and filter different musicians.
  
• Should be able to have customized filters, including distance, rating, musical instruments, genres and budget, etc.
  

Time-consuming process

• Users feel hard to compare different musicians.
• Find out musicians or bands have been booked by others.
  
• Customers have to spend a lot of time reading web pages.
  
• Customers have to go through tons of email and calls, and sometime it take long time to receive responses.
  

Community

• Users want to look at previous customer reviews.
  
• Users who book musician for the first time feel and overwhelming.
  

Payment Security

• Users worry about the safety of payment
  

HMW's & Crazy Eights

How might we help users who book musicians for the first time feel comfortable?
How might we create an easy and efficient booking experience for users?
How might we help user to save time?

User flow

User Task: Book a musician by searching.

Paper Wireframing

Lo-fi prototype

Usability Study

Usability Study Round 1

• Sort & Filter not standing out
  
• Add map view
  
• Optimize "Choose your plan"
  

Usability Study Round 2

• Add search by occasion on homepage
• Add checkout progress bar on top
  
• Overused primary color
  

Iteration

• Improve "Sort & Filter" button and add an icon, so that users are able to easily access to sort and filter page.
• Add view in a map, so that users are able to view the distance between users and musicians.
  
• Change to a pop-up window with all booking options after pressing the Book button, instead that booking options are placed below the description box.
  

• Add new section "Find musicians for your events", so that users can search by different occasions, like birthday.
• Change the color and style of the bottom navigation bar.
  
• Add a checkout progress bar on top of checkout pages, which helps orient users where they are in the entire booking procedure,
  

Hi-fi prototype