Overview
The Development Team of Fox Music expressed the need for considerations on the User Experience of their product – Fox Music, platformed on Salesforce. The goal was to identify key problems in the User Experience of Fox Music, and provide recommendations to improvise the same. The report presents the methodologies and processes performed to come up with an understanding of our users, and providing key recommendations based on findings.
Goal
Provide recommendations to better the user experience of Fox Music platform to address the product backlogs for the ongoing sprint, as well as for future considerations.
Process
Background understanding on Fox Music workflows
Gather user insights from 5 UAT sessions
Affinity diagram to organize data points from UAT sessions
Generate findings from Affinity Diagram
Deliver Recommendations
UAT Sessions highlights
Focusing on the expressed concern with the platform, the first step involved participating in 5 UAT sessions. By observing the Fox Music users perform certain tasks, their interaction with the platform as well as communication of their concerns at every step were noted down
"Margins are so wide that everything is so smashed up together"
"The delete option wasn't clear that it is under the settings list"
"I need a faster way to locate the missing cue sheet reports and know if it's for Music or Producer user "
"Adding a new song requires a lot of redundant information to be put in"
Affinity Diagramming
The process used for analyzing the noted observations was Affinity Diagramming. The notes gathered in the UAT sessions were converted into separate data-points. The data points were then clustered together based on similarity of the problem. Finally, each cluster was then summarized with a higher-level theme. Through these themes, the key findings were generated which led to the final recommendations
Key Findings and Recommendations
Based on the affinity diagram exercise, I came up with the following 5 findings The recommendations to each of the above findings are listed below and are a combination of both design and research efforts. It should however be noted that wireframes of the redesign do not take into account the full capabilities of Salesforce (on which Fox Music has been built).
Key Finding 1: Users experience unfamiliarity with terminology in certain areas.
Through observing the users perform key tasks, they reported a level of unfamiliarity with certain terminology used in the environment, especially when filling out fields. For instance, one user asked what the term ‘Running user network’ meant.
M1 points out being unfamiliar with the term - 'Cue Sheet Type'
M1 points out being unfamiliar with the term - 'Running user network'
Recommendation 1: The first step would be to identify the terminologies unfamiliar to users through user interviews and usability testing, as well as trainings. Based on that:
1. Change those terms to something more familiar to users wherever possible, and
2. For terms that cannot be changed or still seem difficult for users to grasp, create pop-ups to reveal extra information when hovering over the link/field. Additionally, the text in the pop-ups should be tested to see if users understand them well.
Key Finding 2: Less visual clarity, visibility and accessibility in table views; and Inconspicuous prominent actions.
The users exhibited difficulties in navigating and scrolling across table and list views, and also expressed the desire for more ‘comforting’ views. Other issues included the inability to locate the small down arrow on the extreme right of every entry in the table to perform key actions such as ‘delete’, ‘subscribe’, ‘favorite’ etc.
Users scrolling back and forth on tables due to lot of textual information
M2 hovering around the different fields in creating a new song. Fields seemed scattered
M2 requires more 'comforting' views of the table
M2 didn't realize how to delete a song record (drop-sown arrow on the extreme right)
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Screen
Locations
Recommendation 2: To address the problems with table views, the reports list view was redesigned as an example and can be applied to other tables and list views as well.
Key Finding 3: There is an overlap of roles between different users
At certain points, the users expressed concern with the overlap of items like Fields, Salesforce Objects, Search Results etc. for the two different kinds of users – the Music User and the Producer. Users faced difficulty in identifying the association of a certain item with its respective user type, and also areas where items associated with one user type should not be visible to other user type.
Music and producer user roles have overlapping fields
Search results are common for different users
Drop-down of list views needs segregation of Music vs Producer
Recommendation 3:
1. The first step will be to identify areas where the overlaps are happening - items like Salesforce objects, Views etc. which are meant for only Music Users and not Producers; and vice versa through direct interaction with the both Music User and Producers. Ensure that only those fields are only visible to it’s concerned user.
2. Ensure that the terminology usage is different for different users.
3. For functions which are common to both kinds of users, ensure proper segregation. For example, if a search bar yields results visible to both users and visibility cannot be segregated, make sure there is proper indication of the whom it is meant for
Other Findings and Recommendations
Key finding 4: Need for more user control and customization.
User expressed having certain level of control and customization with regards to areas like Dashboards, Table Layouts, Labels, Folder Arrangements and Filters.
Recommendation 4: Need for more user control and customization.
The ideal way to address this would be conducting user research methods like interviews and usability tests to identify where users would like more control.
Another advantage is that this will also reduce the need to make frequent changes based on requirements as users would be able to modify certain things themselves. Potential areas:
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Customized in Dashboards.
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Customized table layouts and information.
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Search criteria like sorting and filters.
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Internal Folders arrangements.
Key finding 5: Extraneous information creating burden for users.
During certain tasks, especially when required to fill out fields, users felt burdened by lot of extra information which they were required to enter in order to complete those tasks.
Recommendation 5: Need for more user control and customization.
1. Determine through user research that only those fields that are important to a given user type are displayed to them.
2. If certain fields cannot be eliminated, try and populating them automatically wherever possible.
3. Visual Design can help a lot ease out the burden of filling out fields. Ensure that fields are grouped together properly based on similarity and context which will help the users to process information more quickly.
Conclusion
Fox Music along with other projects were presented by me to several executives at Fox Networks Group, and were well received by the Fox Music Team. I concluded by stressing upon the fact that the team should have their UX efforts geared towards more personalized interactions with the end users through interviews and usability tests.
Me giving the final internship presentation to the executives at Fox Networks Group.
Key learnings from the experience
