Reveel - Project 1
Research to investigate low Weekly-Active-Users + Design outcomes
Role: User Research, Strategy and Design
ABOUT REVEEL
Reveel is an all-in-one music business app that allows musicians to keep track of credits and metadata for their music projects. At its inception, it was conceived as a product that would solely help with musicians getting credited and paid, for collaborative work. In response to the pandemic when remote work became the norm, communication and progress tracking features were included that made remote collaboration easier.
PROBLEM DEFINITION
RESEARCH
Research Plan
Stakeholders
Adrien Stern, CEO and co-founder of Reveel
Walid van Boetzaeler, CTO and co-founder of Reveel
Stakeholder goals
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Determine if users are getting value and if not, what is preventing them from getting value.
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Determine if they are the right users/target audience.
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Determine if Reveel is meeting expectations.
User-specific Research questions
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How are users using Reveel?
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What are the blockers for using Reveel on a regular basis?
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What are their expectations?
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What are their pain-points that Reveel is not addressing?
Research Methodology
Generative research to understand blockers, expectations and pain-points through 30 minute moderated, semi-structured, remote interviews over Zoom
Schedule
2 week Research sprint
Target Users
Based on the NPS data, the Beta Testers who were:
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Promoters who used the app at least twice a week
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Promoters who had not used the app for over 2 weeks
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Passives and Detractors
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Inactive users - no engagement
Participant information
Findings and Insights
Once the interviews were conducted, I compiled and shared the notes with the stakeholders, after which the stakeholders and I extracted the insights through affinity mapping on Miro.
Finding 1
How are users using Reveel?
Participants who used Reveel regularly had the following in common:
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They used Reveel both while collaborating as well as while working independently.
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They used Reveel not only to manage credits but also to stay organized and progress track.
While working independently or collaborating, the organizational aspect of Reveel is the biggest appeal to me. - Research Participant
Finding 2
What are the blockers for using Reveel?
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The Beta group comprised of mostly students or part-time musicians who were not creating a lot of music, regularly.
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While some of the users had recognized the potential of Reveel to keep structured even when they were not collaborating, others believed that they could use Reveel only when they were collaborating.
Recommendations for Findings 1 and 2
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Consider opening the Beta to more prolific and experienced musicians, to diversify the Beta group.
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Revisit the messaging of Reveel which was "a collaborative platform to manage your creative projects". Consider replacing "collaborative platform" with "music project management or music business platform", to make the intent of Reveel, clear.
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Consider starting an email or social media campaign to educate users about the potential of using Reveel even while not collaborating.
Finding 3
What are their expectations?
A few participants expected to find collaborators to work with using Reveel.
I thought it had more of a social network, find collaborators.
- Research Participant
I expected Reveel to help me collaborate with artists around the world.
- Research Participant
Recommendation
Consider improving the onboarding to walk the user through all the features that Reveel has to offer, to set expectations at the outset.
Insight 1
Participants currently struggle to find collaborators to work with.
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Consider adding a social aspect to the Roadmap.
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For MVP, consider introducing a place for users of Reveel to connect and find collaborators, on one of Reveel’s social media platforms.
Recommendations
Insight 2
Working remotely, sharing files back and forth and keeping track of all the files is frustrating.
Consider conducting more research to further understand pain-points, motivations and goals with respect to file sharing.
Recommendation
PRODUCT AND DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
Based on the recommendations:
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The messaging of Reveel was changed, to replace "collaborative platform" with "all-in-one music business platform".
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The Beta was opened up to users with more diverse experience levels.
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A track/song onboarding was included after the profile onboarding to walk the users through Reveel's features.
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While Reveel was not planned as a social app, since finding collaborators to work with was a major pain-point, a social feature was included further along the Roadmap. For the MVP, we decided to start a channel on the Discord app where users could connect and find collaborators. It would also be used as a platform to provide updates to users and collect feedback.
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Another round of generative user research was conducted to understand user expectations and goals with respect to file-sharing.
DESIGN
Track/Song Onboarding Design
I worked on Sketches for the Track/Song Onboarding that now follows the Profile onboarding. This introduces the user to all the ways they could use Reveel and sets expectations. The sketches were followed by a prototype on Figma and then they were passed on to the Developer who is also the CTO of Reveel.
SKETCHES
PROTOTYPE
PROJECT IMPACT
After the implementation of the recommendations:
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The NPS score marginally rose from 14 in early October to 20 in mid November.
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Some qualitative feedback we received from the users after we upgraded the onboarding:
The experience of Reveel has improved considerably since I first started using it. - Feedback received during a user roundtable
PROJECT LIMITATIONS AND FINAL WORDS
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Unfortunately, none of the inactive users that we reached out to, responded to our interview requests. It would have been interesting to understand why they did not continue using Reveel.
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Being a start-up, there was a budget constraint for Research and we could only recruit from within the Beta Tester group.
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The findings were limited by the lack of diversity in the Beta Tester group.
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A lesson I learned from one of my interviews, was to ask follow-up questions even if they sound stupid in my head. I asked one of the users, how they would describe Reveel to a friend. He said it was like a Rolex. The only Rolex I knew, was the watch and I did not ask him to explain and made a mental note to look it up later. I did and I still couldn't figure out what he meant. It was a few weeks later that I heard someone say Rolodex on a TV show and then I realized that what he meant was Rolodex and that he might have clarified that, if I'd just asked.
Project 1