PRS for Music is a British music copyright collective with over 150K users and 30 million songs registered on its platform.
Whilst on the hunt for a design lead, PRS for Music wanted to review the state of their offering and identify UX and UI improvements across their products.
My job was to provide each product owner with detailed feedback of short-term iterations as well as long-term ambitions to improve the overall experience of these products and PRS for Music.
PRS for Music gathers user feedback every quarter in the form of a survey. I started by sifting through the two most recent sets collected (around 1500 entries). I plotted every pain point and organised them all in rows. Each row related to the environment where the frustration occurred and each colour (red, orange, and green) resembled the overall satisfactory score of each user. This exercise revealed what 'problems' users face, how frequently they may face them but also became the catalyst to learning each product. Two main themes surfaced and became the pillars for my work moving forward - "navigate & simplify."
Before scrambling to add value it was important I was as well equipped as possible. Each product review began with multiple kick-offs that included product owners, managers, and developers. We’d start with a series of comprehensive walk-throughs discussing the product in its current form, previous design decisions, and any thoughts for the future. For one product the future would alter the way that product could be used. This meant creating new user flows and working closely with the product owner to ensure we understood all the ways users would navigate this product.
From there I began performing tasks on my own. Starting with simple ones and working towards the more complex, I was constantly taking notes, identifying problems, uncovering opportunities and using the qualitative data to guide me. I was particularly focused on usability, information architecture, navigation, visual styling, and of course responsiveness.
Next on my list was to deliver long-term direction. Immediately there were a few key concepts that stood out as being important and served for a more wholistic experience. Helping to connect products, introducing new elements to the design communication and refreshing the interface were a few challenges I gravitated towards instantly.
The end result included interactive prototypes for a number of products. One of the many reasons for doing this was to have prototypes already prepped and ready for user testing when they were ready to start exploring these concepts in more detail.
The last and most important part of this entire review was to successfully document my work. I used Notion and Miro from the beginning so there was a steady and organic library already building. Towards the end I just needed to consolidate and refine my thoughts, walk the relative owners through everything and make sure it was all linked and navigable.
Feel free to pop me an email at calvinmarkbowen@gmail.com.
I look forward to hearing from you!
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