Reveel - Project 2
Generative research to understand behavior and pain-points associated with File sharing + 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
Based on research conducted in Project 1, we found that sharing files back and forth and keeping track of the files was a pain-point. As opposed to in-studio sessions, where the need for sharing files is minimal, remote collaborative sessions require sending files back and forth for every small change which could easily get out-of-hand.
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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To determine how file sharing would fit into Reveel
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To understand the minimum requirements for file sharing that would add value to users
User-specific Research questions
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How, when and why do users share files?
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What do users expect from file sharing services?
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What are the challenges related to file sharing?
Research Methodology
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Generative research to understand behavior, expectations and pain-points through 30 minute moderated, semi-structured remote interviews over Zoom
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Survey to understand preferred file sharing services and gaps in experience
Schedule
2 week Research sprint
Target Users
Survey: all Beta Testers + musician friends of Stakeholders
User interviews: Beta Testers with varied job profiles related to music viz. singer-songwriters, producers and session musicians
Participant information
Survey:
User Interviews:
Findings and Insights
From Survey
Insights
1. Google Drive, WeTransfer and Dropbox were the preferred file sharing services of the survey participants.
2. The top features that the participants liked about their current service were:
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Easy to share
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Storage space
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Shared folders
3. The top features that the participants wanted from a file sharing service were:
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Easy to use
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Faster upload speeds
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More storage space
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Ability to comment
From User Interviews
Research Question
How, when and why do users share files?
1. Every file sharing service lacked one or more features that the participants expected and their work-around was to use different file sharing services:
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depending on who they were working with
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the type of files they needed to share. For ex. WeTransfer exclusively for larger files or WAV files because the other services did not support sharing larger files
2. Files are shared back and forth after every small change.
3. Files are shared for feedback, guidance and updates.
Insights
iCloud is good when I am working with one or two people at a time, when there are more people, Google Drive is better.
- Research Participant
Sometimes there would be 10 different versions of the same song with minor tweaks that we send back and forth.
- Research Participant
Research Question
What do users expect from a file sharing service?
1. The user interviews reinforced the insights from the survey.
2. The top features that participants expected from a file sharing service were:
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Good storage space
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Good upload speeds
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Shared folders
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Easy to use
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Ability to add a description to the file
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Ability to comment on the file
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Ability to communicate on live feed while sending a file
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Easily accessible by everyone
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Organized
Insights
It is nice to communicate about the files I am sending. But when I am using iMessage, I am also sending messages that are unrelated to the project. So it's not a place where the conversation is exclusively around the music we are creating.
- Research Participant
The ideal file sharing service would be a mix between Google Drive and iCloud. Google Drive's organization with no size or storage limit.
- Research Participant
Research Question
What are the challenges related to file sharing?
1. While working remotely, files that are shared back and forth with minor tweaks, are hard to keep track of.
2. Juggling between 2 or 3 file sharing services for different needs is frustrating.
3. With size limits, compromising on quality by sending an mp3 file in place of a WAV file (better quality) is limiting.
4. Making sure everyone has access to the files in Google Drive is unnecessarily complicated.
5. Not everyone uses file sharing services such as Dropbox, so there could be an issue with accessibility.
Insights
PRODUCT AND DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
Strategy for MVP
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Retaining the flexibility of using different file sharing services, provide an option to share links from these services
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Enable including a title, description and tags related to the linked file
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Auto-organize all links related to a song in a separate tab
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Enable commenting on the links
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Enable sharing the link along with details directly on to the feed
Strategy for final product vision
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In addition to the features in the MVP, build a file sharing service within the app that supports all the user expectations such as good upload speeds, good storage capacity and ability to send large files
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Provide file sharing with all the aforementioned features as a premium subscription service, depending on feasibility of implementation
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Alternately, integrate with Google Drive, Dropbox and WeTransfer, to provide seamless file sharing capabilities
DESIGN
Based on the strategy, I designed the file sharing feature for the MVP with:
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an option to share a link on the feed
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a form with options to fill out the name, description, tags and link to a session
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auto-organization of the links in the attachment tab
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option to comment on each link separately
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SKETCHES
PROTOTYPE
PROJECT IMPACT
After the feature was released, we received the following qualitative feedback:
I like how I can have a full conversation on attachments. It's more organized this way. - Feedback received during a subsequent interview
Being able to upload attachment links was very useful. - Feedback received during a subsequent interview
FINAL WORDS
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Subsequent usability tests revealed that some participants were confused by the phrase "Attach a link" or were generally uncertain regarding what link referred to. We determined that adding the logos of the different file sharing services at the beginning of the form might make it clearer.
Project 2