User Analysis
  • Student bands.
  • Individual Independent Performers.
  • Conservatory Students.
  • Music Professors.

Characteristics:  

  • Formally educated at Conservatories: NEC, Berklee, Boston Conservatory, Julliard
  • Institutions Affiliated with: Berklee, Boston Conservatory, MIT (music dept.)
  • Smart phone users
  • Laptop users
  • Genres: Jazz, Classical, Indie
  • Instruments: saxophone, trumpet, cello, guitar, bass, opera singer
  • Aged 20-55 (most interviewed users were between 20-25 or 50-55)
  • Nationalities: American, Swiss, Greek

Problems Faced:

  • Connecting with new venues. “Even when planning a concert of my own, it's difficult to find a space. I’ve focused my search to Greek Churches, clubs, etc. hoping that it will be easier.” -Greek Cellis 
  • Optimizing the number of performances for the distance travelled.** Often when we’re on tour we find out when we get home that there was this totally sweet club that we could have played out before our actual gig.
  • Setting expectations for experience of playing at a specific venue (accommodations, atmosphere, etc).** e.g Interviewees complained of having to pay cover to be at the venue they were performing at.** e.g. room accommodations, security accommodations etc. Interviewees complained of having gear stolen at sketchy venues.** Money dealings (venues that pay late etc.)
  • Organizing different tasks related to performing.** Organizing tours: accommodations, booking shows that are along the already-decided route.
    • Coordinating logistics with everyone involved.
Task Analysis:

1. Connecting with venues especially when planning tours:

  • Finding a space for a planned event (e.g. fundraiser event mentioned above).
  • Finding a gig to play for a venue (club, coffee shop, bar, etc) Locally.
  • Planning venues for tours either for planning the tour itself, or looking for venues along an already planned route.

2. Checking availability and booking venues

  • See which venues are available on a given day along the tour path travelled. 
  • Schedule available venues for a gig.
  • Optimize their gig schedule on a tour. 

3. Viewing their trip schedule.

  • View their tour schedule based on the venues they booked
  • No labels

1 Comment

  1. Edward Oscar Benson

    You've identified a user population with a great number of potential problems to drill down on. Pick one of the problems you identify – such as padding a sparse tour calendar or curating what to expect once you get to a venue – and run with that. Keep in mind that we really want to see you think hard about the problem the user faces and design an interface to meet that need. Rather than the backwards approach of thinking first about the information to be curated and then building a UI on top of that data set.

    For the user analysis, you provided a nice overview and choice quotes from your interviews, but we'd like to see more detail about how the user classes differ: do touring music professors and touring jam bands face the same challenges? Do they have the same competencies? What makes a conservatory student different than an individual performer?