Sector - Technology, Music

UX Techniques Used - User Research, User Personas, Affinity map, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing

My Role - UI/UX Design

Project Time - 4 Weeks

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Background

Sound Quest is a music app designed to provide a seamless listening experience with a minimalist interface and a reward system to enhance user engagement. 

This project aims to create a minimalist music app with an instant play button, ensuring a seamless listening experience. To enhance user engagement, the app includes a reward system, where users earn points for listening to full songs. Upon reaching 500 points, they receive a coupon as a reward, encouraging consistent usage and retention.

By combining simplicity and gamification, this app offers a smooth, engaging way to enjoy music while fostering user loyalty.

As a UX/UI designer passionate about user engagement, I wanted to create something different—an app that keeps things simple while enhancing music discovery and retention.

Problem Statement

After researching the music streaming market, I found that many existing apps overwhelm users with excessive features, cluttered interfaces, and complex playback controls. Users struggle with finding a seamless, intuitive music experience that prioritizes ease of use and personalization. Additionally, there is little motivation to listen to full songs, leading to lower engagement and retention.

This led to the problem statement: Sound Quest aims to provide a simple, distraction-free music experience by offering instant play functionality, a reward system that encourages full song listens, and personalized music discovery in a visually appealing interface.

Research Goal

After identifying the problem statement, I conducted research to validate user needs and define my goals, which focused on ensuring:

  1. Users can instantly play songs without interruptions

  2. Users earn reward points for listening to complete songs.

  3. Upon reaching 500 points, users receive a coupon to redeem.

UX RESEARCH

Project Goals

After conducting user interviews and identifying key insights, I mapped out the project goals using a Venn diagram, aligning business objectives, user needs, common goals, and technical considerations to create a balanced and impactful solution for Sound Quest.

Methodology

To gain deeper insights for my project, I conducted in-depth interviews with five participants to understand their music listening habits, preferences, and pain points. The research revealed the following key insights:

  1. Users value simplicity and minimalism in music apps

  2. Personalized recommendations and curated playlists are essential for music discovery

  3. Reward systems can enhance user engagement, but flexibility and variety in rewards are crucial

  4. Users want seamless playback and minimal interruptions

Affinity Mapping

Building on my project goals, I created an affinity map to organize user insights, identifying key themes and patterns. This helped me prioritize features that align with user needs, ensuring Sound Quest delivers a seamless and engaging experience.

User Persona

After organizing user insights with an affinity map, I created two personas to represent my target users, capturing their listening habits, preferences, and frustrations. These personas helped me design Sound Quest with a user-centered approach, ensuring the app meets real needs and expectations.

Pain Points

Using insights from my research and personas, I identified key pain points that users face in existing music apps. They are:

  1. Lack of personalization in music recommendations

  2. No incentives for listening to full songs

  3. Complex playback interfaces

  4. Difficulty retaining users in a competitive market

  5. Need for effective monetization strategies

  6. Developing algorithms for personalized recommendations and reward systems

Site Map

With a clear understanding of user pain points, I created a site map for Sound Quest, strategically organizing features and navigation flows to optimize usability. This structure ensured a seamless and engaging experience, helping users effortlessly explore and interact with their personalized music journey.

User Flow

After defining pain points and design solutions, I created a user flow to map out the journey within Sound Quest. This helped visualize how users interact with the app, ensuring a smooth, intuitive experience from discovery to engagement.

Exploring

Before diving into digital wireframes, I began with hand-drawn sketches to explore layout ideas and quickly visualize key elements of the Sound Quest interface. These early sketches allowed me to experiment freely and set a clear direction. From there, I translated the strongest concepts into structured wireframes, bringing form and flow to the user experience.

Wireframes

With the user flow defined, I moved on to creating wireframes, visually mapping out the app’s layout and interactions. This step allowed me to refine Sound Quest’s structure, ensuring a smooth, intuitive experience before diving into high-fidelity designs.

UX DESIGN

Design Solution

Based on the wireframes, I crafted design solutions that focus on simplicity, engagement, and personalization, shaping Sound Quest into a user-friendly experience that meets real needs.

Sound Quest's design solution addressed the user needs and pain points identified during research. The app features:

  1. Instant Play: A one-tap play button for seamless music playback

  2. Reward System: Users earn points for listening to full songs, redeemable for coupons or other rewards

  3. Personalized Discovery: Curated playlists and recommendations based on user preferences

  4. Minimalist Interface: A clean and intuitive design that minimizes distractions

1. Instant Play

2. Reward System

3.Personalized Discovery

4. Minimalist Interface

UI DESIGN

UI Library Components

I’ve collected few references online and taken several screenshots from the existing app in order to define a design system that could allow me to create consistent high-fidelity wireframes. Logo, typography, colour palette, buttons and cards are the main elements I’ve outlined at this stage.

High Fidelity

After building the UI component library, I brought Sound Quest to life with high-fidelity designs, refining the visuals, interactions, and overall aesthetic to create a polished and immersive user experience.

USABILITY TEST

Iterations

With the high-fidelity designs in place, I moved into usability testing to see how real users interacted with Sound Quest. Their feedback revealed a few key improvements, which I used to refine the design—ensuring the final experience felt intuitive, rewarding, and perfectly in tune with their needs.

After refining the high-fidelity designs based on earlier feedback, I arrived at a polished version that felt much more aligned with user needs. To validate these changes, I conducted another round of usability testing—this time focusing on how users interacted with the updated interface. The testing revealed the following key insights:

  1. Users found the one-tap play button intuitive and easy to use

  2. The reward system was engaging, but users wanted more flexibility in rewards

  3. Users wanted a clearer reward progress tracker for better visibility

Results

The usability testing results informed the following design improvements:

  1. Enhanced Reward Customization: Introducing more redemption options beyond coupons

  2. Improved Progress Tracking: Making reward status more visually accessible on the home screen

  3. Refined UI Navigation: Ensuring seamless interactions with music playback and reward tracking

Impact of Sound Quest

Transforming the Music Listening Experience

Sound Quest has revolutionized the way people enjoy music by providing a seamless, distraction-free listening experience. With its minimalist design and reward system, the app has:

  1. Increased User Engagement: Sound Quest's reward system has motivated users to listen to full songs, resulting in a significant increase in user engagement and retention.

  2. Improved User Satisfaction: The app's intuitive design and personalized recommendations have led to higher user satisfaction rates, with users praising the app's simplicity and ease of use.

  3. Enhanced Music Discovery: Sound Quest's curated playlists and recommendations have helped users discover new music and artists, promoting music diversity and exploration.

  4. Streamlined Music Playback: The app's one-tap play button has eliminated frustration and distractions, allowing users to focus on enjoying their music.

Conclusion

Sound Quest's user-centered design approach resulted in a minimalist music app that provides a seamless listening experience with a rewarding system. The app's design addresses common pain points in music apps, such as cluttered interfaces and lack of personalized recommendations. By incorporating user feedback and testing results, Sound Quest can continue to refine its design and provide an enjoyable music experience for its users.

Reflection

Working on Sound Quest has been a great learning experience for me. I started by identifying problems in music apps—too much clutter, no personal recommendations, and no rewards for listening to full songs. My goal was to create a simple and engaging app that solves these issues.

I designed a clean interface that makes it easy to use. The instant play button lets users listen to music with just one tap. The reward system encourages people to finish songs by giving them points, which can be redeemed for coupons.

One challenge was making the rewards feel natural rather than forced. I had to test different ideas to ensure users saw the points as a fun bonus, not a pressure to listen longer. User feedback helped me refine the system to make it feel more engaging.

Overall, this project taught me how good design can improve user experience. I learned how to balance simplicity, fun, and usability. Sound Quest reflects my growth as a designer and my ability to create meaningful digital experiences.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Why you should choose Sound Quest?

Some potential reasons for choosing Sound Quest include:

  1. Music engagement: Sound Quest leverages the universal appeal of music, making it a relatable and engaging project.

  2. Gamification: The app's point-based system and reward mechanism provide an opportunity to explore gamification elements and motivational design.

  3. User experience: Designing an app that encourages users to listen to music and rewards them for doing so requires careful consideration of user experience and interface design.

  4. Practical application: Sound Quest has potential real-world applications, such as promoting music discovery or encouraging users to explore new genres.

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