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Jamr
Listen to music live with friends.
A freemium to premium UI/UX case study.
Jamr
Overview
Jamr is a music media startup company that launched two years ago. It features a service that allows users to listen to music live with friends.
Currently as a successful company, Jamr is a freemium mobile-web experience with a mobile app available for IOS and Android.
Objective
Jamr is requesting the app to transition from a free to a paid service. They need opportunities for:
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New users to subscribe to the premium product upon registration in the signup flow.
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Returning free users to become paid subscribers in the sign-in flow as well as within the product.
Role: UI/UX Designer
Use Case: Conceptual Case
Duration: 90 hours
Tools Used:
Figma
Procreate
Sheets
Forms
FigJam
Docs
Product Manager's Notes
The following are important details that are already provided to this project:
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The existing signup flow does not have a call to action upon registration that gives the user the opportunity to subscribe.
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The flow does not have prominent calls to action throughout the free experience that gives the user the opportunity — or a compelling reason to subscribe.
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By creating a paid product with better features than the free experience and giving users the opportunity to upgrade to a better product, users will pay the subscription fee. This will lead to a profitable revenue stream.
Users are:
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18 - 24 years old
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Very tech savvy and use their phones for several hours per day
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Very budget conscious
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Music lovers
Brand Design
I have brand design board for this conceptual case study given the provided brand personality examples.
This brand design visual is not to be confused with the style guide, which will be produced later for high fidelity designs during the Design phase.
Brand Attributes:
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Bold
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Smart
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Hip
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Uniquely diverse, but somehow always familiar -- balanced for tension
Industry Leader Analysis
Using data from the product manager's notes, a light competitor's analysis was created before the official research phase began.
This analysis makes note of industry leaders in music media platforms, specifically those that are social. After listing subjective likes and dislikes about each flow, actionable goal ideas were created that can help pave the way for future design goals.
Project Plan
For this case, the project plan is cyclical. Data is gathered during the "Discovery" phase, and research is synthesized for the Design phase.In the plan, the Design and Validate process is iterated upon at various fidelity stages.
To view details on the specific strategies, reasoning, and time frames, please see the graphic below.
Discovery
Research Plan
Jamr is a successful music streaming product with some basic flows for a freemium service. Research must still be conducted on its target market to discover how to best transform Jamr into a paid service.
A research plan was created for the following objective:
Identify potential users for this project, analyze what inspires them to pay for music streaming, and discover social listening habits.
To learn the best way to address this objective, here are just a few key questions for keeping research on track:
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What are people's preferred music streaming services?
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How much do they listen to music per week? With friends?
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What inspires users to pay for music streaming?
Methodologies for completing this research phase include:
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Survey - quantitative survey that functions also as a screener for interviews
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Remote cognitive interviewing
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Research Data Synthesis
The research plan also states dates for completion and the recruitment demographics that were once again noted by the Product Manager.
Survey
The Google Forms survey that was created collected dozens of helpful responses to further guide the research process. Here are just a few data points:
Survey Highlights
Of the data provided we can conclude that:
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Music is an important pastime for this demographic.
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Most users see listening to music as a social activity.
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Popular social music platforms include Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
These points will be helpful in designing for user motivations.
Interviews
Five participants were selected for remote interviews.
To select these participants, attributes in the following were preferred:
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18 - 24 years old
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Experience with music streaming apps
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High screen time
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Has a premium streaming account
A summary of these interview results can be found in following sections for synthesis.
Affinity Maps
During a brainstorming session, key themes were noted from the results of the survey (blue) and interview process (yellow). These points were then arranged into like groups.
Before
After
Synthesis
The following common ideas were realized during this process:
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Users have dedicated purposes for streaming platforms. (Ex: Many users saw Spotify as a good platform for mixed music and YouTube as a reliable platform for soundtrack and music video streaming.)
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Most users are in an early career stage and use music for productivity and focus.
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Common features used include playlists and recommendations.
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Users are highly motivated by budget friendly plans.
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Users are tech savvy and have an aversion to AI generated content.
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Desktop to mobile compatibility and accessibility is important.
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Users find paying for advertisements to be worthwhile.
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Music is integrated into their social lifestyle.
These points will be helpful in creating proposed solutions.
Persona
To better visualize these user behaviors, a user persona is created.
Goal
In combining Jamr's goal of offering premium services and users' goals of listening to music while fulfilling social needs, the following goal summarizes this persona:
Give users a way to subscribe to Jamr that responds to users' motivations in socializing with friends.
Design - Phase 2
User Flows
User flows play an important role in laying out the framework for concise user goals. These flows also help communicate to developers the conditions for advancing across screens.
Reasoning
In this case, it's assumed that since Jamr is a currently successful freemium service, the only flows that need to be developed are relating to helping Jamr become a monetized platform. These are the flows:
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Subscription Flow - A reusable flow referenced in other flows to trigger Jamr Plus subscription purchase.
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Account Flow - Log In & Sign Up.
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Start Music Space Flow - Open a public room for queuing music.
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Join Friend's Space Flow - Join friend's music room.
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Listen to Music Flow - Sequence of sponsorships playing and completion.
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Enable Visual Mode Flow - new mode added for users to watch artist uploaded videos.
Low Fidelity Designs
To conserve time and and work with current Figma skills, I have decided to initially create low fidelity screens on Figma. These screens be the foundation for the next iteration used in testing.
Wireflows
These screens are arranged into cohesive flows to demonstrate each goal.
Jamr Plus Features
The following are the new Jamr Plus features noted in these flows:
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Own more than one space.
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Make your space public.
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Enable video mode.
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Skip ads.
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Personalize decorative Space options.
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Personalize decorative profile options.
Validate - Phase 3
Test Script
We are testing Jamr for user engagement, accessibility, and ability to recognize and engage with the features of a new paid service model.
A Test script is created with these flows, goals, and the prototype in mind to stay on track.
Some examples of the testing prompts include:
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What’s new about Jamr now?
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What happens after a while of listening to songs with friends?
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What can you still change about your space even if you aren’t subscribed?
Low Fidelity Test Results
Five users who match key demographics were selected to participate in remote low fidelity testing on Figma.
A usability test report was created to rank issues in order of importance. Here are just a few:
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4/5 users didn’t know to scroll down to see the differences between Friends and Solo plans.
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Opening a space before listening to music is not intuitive and most users would rather go straight to listening to a song. One user would rather owning a space be a choice.
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Users have issues with completing interactive ads
Solutions - Before & After
Screen solutions were created in response to users' comments. Here are a few before and after decisions.
High Fidelity Designs
At this stage, high fidelity designs are created to prepare for the next round of testing. More details on high fidelity design decisions will be shown later in the case study.
Validate - Phase 5
Test Script
We are testing Jamr using a similar testing script to Phase 5. However, there have been some additional questions created to assess users' moods now that high fidelity designs have been made. These include:
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What are your general thoughts about the subscription process?
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Do you feel like this process is clear and easy to follow?
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Any current frustrations? Are there any parts of this that you feel could be easier to work with?
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Do you have any other thoughts you’d like to share?
High Fidelity Test Results
Five more users who match key demographics and did not previous participate in Jamr research were selected to participate in remote low fidelity testing on Figma.
A usability test report was created to rank issues in order of importance. Here are just a few:
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A few users had difficulty leaving the Jamr Plus features page and cancelling subscribing.
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Almost all users expressed preference in clearly showing personalization options in profiles and Spaces.
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There are minor requests for the adjustment in aesthetic choices of certain UI elements.
High Fidelity Solutions - Before & After
Screen solutions were created in response to users' experiences during Phase 5. Here are a few before and after decisions.
Design - Phase 6
High Fidelity Prototype
A final high fidelity prototype is created to showcase final design decisions. Here is a preview of the screens.
Video Prototype
This video demonstrates the clickthrough prototype of the completed user flows.
Prototype Purpose
As previously stated, other key features for Jamr, like the Discovery and search function, are not included in the final product solution as only the items related to Jamr Plus subscription are to be developed.
Final Thoughts
Jamr's new Plus features were created to work with Jamr's current brand identity and working wireframes. In the future, Jamr's subscription features may have an impact on future updates and brand identity. It is important to record users' responses to these new drastic changes and ideas to maintain a progressive, yet recognizable, outlook.
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