PRS FOR MUSIC

Product Design - RESPONSIVE WEB APP DESIGN AND BUILD

FEB 2016 - JUNE 2016
ROLE: UX ARCHITECT
CLIENT: PRS FOR MUSIC
AGENCY: HEAD LONDON

Background

PRS for Music are a music copyright, royalties and licensing society that were undergoing a large scale digital transformation. Head were helping with a roadmap and strategy for this transformation and were carrying out research activities towards this goal.

My role on the project was UX Lead of the Product team, working parallel to the Lead UX Architect on the roadmap team, as they looked ahead. The roadmap team would look forward to what we could do next, and us, the Product team would design and build the MVP of the first product and test it. 

The first product we were to work on was transforming how PRS members submitted Set Lists that they had performed, so that the royalties could be paid to the writers of those works. The current process was using paper forms, PDFs in emails and a website for small gigs, which consisted of many pain points from both the businesses and users side alike. We designed and built the MVP of a responsive WebApp using Angular.js.

Research

We carried out research activities including a Field Studio and business requirements gathering. 

Just like many other organisations there were lots of legacy systems and data constraints, as well as teams working in silos. We had to understand where the data was held, who owned it, how it spoke to other systems and any constraints that we had. There was constant requirements gathering as we went along, and I was working closely with the Product Owner and BA to work through this as the project progressed.

The purpose of the Field Studio was to immerse ourselves into the world of the writer, the performer and the venue to understand their entire journey with works, music, set lists, and then to map this onto a journey-map of all of their touch-points and pain points. Once we understood this, it would enable us to create a better online experience for them and their needs.

Some of the activities we carried out were:

  • Ethnography
  • Interviews
  • Going to gigs and performances

Process flow after business discovery

Product design

After defining a set of experience principles for the project, the process I followed was to take insights from the research and from speaking to teams within the business and start mapping out some journeys to understand the user flows and key decision points throughout the whole WebApp. 

From here I would use a rapid process with the rest of the team to design each story in the most user-centric way, getting input from UI Designers & Developers along the way.

  1. I would sketch on paper
  2. Brief Designer and Developer - receive feedback
  3. Iterate and Co-create the solution
  4. Design crit in the browser as it's being built 
  5. Deliver feature
  6. Repeat

We carried with process on for 7, 2 weeks sprints, running 2 user testing sessions between sprints 2 and 4.

USER TESTING

I am keen advocate of always testing your assumptions, and to not wait until the end of a project to get user feedback if it can be helped. As such, we user tested the build of the product after sprint 2 and after sprint 4. This was a challenge, as we were working with an overseas backend build partner that were integrating as we were working. Because of this, we had to fake lots of the data in the system to enable seamless journeys through.

I was assisted by a Junior UX Architect in planning and carrying out these 2 user testing sessions, in which we used Zoom conferencing software to mirror the screen and a separate camera to observe the participant. The client observed with us, so that insights could be observed directly and knowledge shared wth the rest of the stakeholders.

After the two days of testing in each round we would carry out a zoom out debrief workshop to finalise insights, discuss solutions, which were presented back to the client in the end of sprint review and actions taken directly with the team through myself.

Data visualisation

As part of the suite of products we were designing, we had to design the "dashboard" area for when members receive statements that their royalties have been paid. This was a challenge in itself as the data that was available was limited, and the amount of time we had to do this, as well it being accessible for members on their mobiles as well as desktop.

My process here was very Business Analyst focussed at the start, mapping out all the data that they had, speaking to all the different teams in BI etc, before finally coming up with sketches for each part. I worked with a UI Designer to move these sketches into Hi-Fi designs to be presented alongside our work on the Set List part of the project.

Outputs

  • The Digital Transformation project continues and more projects on the roadmap are being undertaken.
  • The Set List backend build is still going on, however the front end experience is finished for the MVP.
  • The overall journey for submitting Set Lists has been simplified, modernised and made more accessible.
  • The app is and will be behind a logged in access point when launched, so you cannot use it unless you are a PRS Member. 
  • PRS have learnt lots about agile ways of working throughout the project and continue to use this going forward.