ekko is a monthly subscription-based musical instrument and equipment service for home-studio musicians. ekko offers three price tiers: beginner, intermediate, and pro. Each month, members select six items to rent for the month. If they love their item, they can keep it—send the rest back. Available items include instruments, interfaces, amps, cables, guitar pedals, DJ equipment, mixing consoles, MIDI controllers, and more.
What is ekko?
Why a solution is needed
Currently, musical equipment rental (backline) is expensive, exclusive, and inflexible. ekko allows home-studio musicians on a budget to have better access to the gear they'd love to create with.
Overview
Challenges
High quality, high priced gear could be stolen, sold, or pawned. In order to prevent this, there would need to be extra security and liability actions in place
Background checks or credit card only transactions
It might be difficult to convince people already on a budget to pay for another monthly service
Risks
Although there is an audience, it is unclear how much users are willing to pay per month; could cause low membership
Assumptions
Home-studio musicians are interested in a service like this
More males than females will use the app
Design and prototyping will likely take at least 4 weeks, up to 4 prototype versions
Accessibility audit will be necessary
Goals
Design an app interface for iOS.
Measuring Success
The app will allow for:
A convient mobile experience
Seamless "shopping" experience
Membership quota
Encourage members to invite friends and family to join
Target audience
Males aged 25 - 45 years old
Home-studio musicians
See target audience board below for key persona
Secondary audience
Podcasters
Families with children in band
Problem statement
It is an unfortunate reality that musical equipment such as guitar effects pedals, audio interfaces, amplifiers, microphones, and mixers can be extremely costly. As a musician on a budget, it can be frustrating when you have ambitious musical ideas, but lack the necessary equipment to bring those ideas to fruition. There’s an opportunity to make musical equipment more accessible, and thus help musicians on a budget create the music they envision.
Competitive analysis
Persona
Design work
Lo-fi prototype - Onboarding
Lo-fi prototype - Tutorial
Lo-fi prototype - Interacting with Data
Design system
Experimenting with Desirability
Considering desirability, I decided to make a rewards system that was based on the value of individual pieces of equipment purchased (not simply rented). Users could track their progress by tapping the "Rewards" tab in the bottom navigation.
Usability testing
Description of the task users performed
Users were meant to create an account, navigate through the app tutorial as a new user, browse for a product using the search field and filtering results, view a product and add it to their current order, complete checkout, and view their current rewards status.
Results and summary of the usability test
Overall, users found the flow to be intuitive and enjoyed the"vibe", design, and tone of the app. Although I am still working on translating my lo-fi screens into hi-fi screens, users found the app to feel "legit" and professional. As ekko is still a work in progress, there are a few problem areas that need to be ironed out. There was a bug in the Rewards screen, where users were unable to go "back" to the previous screen. There were also a couple screens that needed some additional attention paid to accessibility, particularly regarding color contrast. I need to think how I can use design to make certain elements less confusing, i.e. the section heading color rectangles on the filtering screens. Regarding content, I received some feedback for the product landing screens, concerning the product details. This user thought it would be helpful to have the product details visible before adding an item to an order.
Final Design
Next steps
Overall, ekko was such a fun project!
From a design perspective, ekko allowed me to think outside the box. This was the first project I have worked on that had a more "masculine" and moody aesthetic.
I definitely want to keep working on ekko and elaborate on screens/designs I did not have time to work on this quarter (i.e. account settings, gearbox, category pages, band instrument offerings, and an improved checkout screen).
Working on this project this quarter taught me so much about paying attention to the details. I have always thought of myself as a "big picture" thinker, but this project challenged me to think more about the micro vs. macro when it comes to interface design.
