Fuse
A multi reality musical platform that connects and brings people together through an enjoyable, shared music listening experience.
Duration: 3 weeks
Team: Rachel Connelly, Claire Kantner, Sara Tieu
Role: Interaction model analysis, UI/UX animation, UI/UX design, Interviewing
Design Challenge
How might we strengthen existing relationships by creating meaningful connections through similar music interest?
User Research
Interviews
Our team each conducted personal interviews with a few participants. We wanted to learn more about how people currently share music and how people currently find music commonalities with other people.
“I don’t share playlists because I get embarrassed.”
This was the biggest pain point that we found when conducting interviews. Many people felt like music was something that was personal.
User Research
Card Sorting
After the interview, we had participants card sort based on most valuable informational hierarchy when deciding what to listen to (artist, song title, recently played, album title, etc). We wanted to learn what kind of information users prioritize for our future design choices.
Original Concept Storyboard
One of our first concept iteration shown on the storyboard is the basis and foundation of Fuse.
Current User Flow
Our current user flow show different catalysts that inspire connection through music. To scope down our project, we decided to focus our design solution on strengthening existing connections.
Future User Flow
After further refinement and team discussion over our general idea, we then created an interaction model with the intervention of our product. This showed us how our product might look like and interact with users.
Wireframes
As a team, we collaborated on medium fidelty wireframes to high fidelity models on Figma. We utilized our future user flow to create the corresponding key interface interactions.
Main Features and Key Interactions
A.R. Initiation
The Fuse experience initiates when listeners bump their phones together. Smart contact lenses, or other future A.R. viewing devices, would be the medium to experience the interface.
A.R. Music Map
Fuse organizes the music map by size and proximity. The listeners’ mutual interests are enlarged and lie central to the map, while individual interests are smaller and lie on the corresponding listener’s side. Below the music map, there is a playlist zone where they can deposit songs to form a playlist.
Forming a Shared Playlist
Listeners can curate their playlist by moving around song bubbles from the music map to the playlist zone.
Exit/Final Playlist
At the end of every collaborative session, listeners can access the playlist on their own to see the artifact of their time together.
Story Time! Use Case Scenario
A story about two acquaintances coming together through the help of Fuse.
Refined Multi Reality Demo
Reflection
I really enjoyed designing Fuse as I am very passionate about music. This project showed me that there is huge potential in working with mixed reality (augmented reality + reality).
If I had more time I would refine the A.R interactions, especially the motion gestures. I would also retake some photos, perhaps of people standing up to show interactions with the music map in a less constrained space.