New Muses
A responsive website to help music teachers discover and teach music by more diverse composers.
Project Overview
My role
UX researcher, UX/UI designer
Who I worked with
New Muses Projects’ Co-Founder and Technical and Co-Artistic Director, Gloria Yin
Duration
3 months
Background
New Muses Project is a nonprofit focused on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in classical music. They want to help people discover new composers outside the traditional canon and perform their music!
Note: in classical music, ‘programming’ a piece means selecting it for a concert or performance.
On the current site, you type in the name of a composer you know and get a recommendation for a woman, POC, or LGBTQ+ composer.
Problem: music teachers and directors program the same works by the same composers
The user’s problem: programming pieces or composers you aren’t already familiar with is risky and time consuming
The organization’s problem: adding new composers and information to the search database is too time and resource intensive
Goal: make it easier for music teachers and directors to find new works and composers and feel confident programming them
Discovery: Gaining Clarity through Research
Research Methods
Stakeholder interviews: I interviewed one of New Muses’ co-founders and their lead musicologist to learn more about the organization’s goals and challenges
User research interviews: I conducted seven user research interviews to understand who the target user is and what problems are they experiencing
Market research: I analyzed other organizations and services in this space and explored the tools people currently use to address the problems they face
Comparitive analysis: I researched companies and products in other industries to get a better understanding of how industry leaders tackle similar problems
Research Goals
Understand where the organization wants to go and what’s holding them back
Figure out if there’s actually product market fit
Define the target audience and get a clear understanding of their problems and needs
Definition: the Who, What, and Why
Organization goals and pain points
New Muses wants music by more diverse composers to be played and taught more often. They hope to do this by helping people discover new composers and fall in love with their music.
My stakeholder interviews discovered 2 main pain points:
Limited resources: adding composers to their database is too time consuming for their small team
Lack of clarity: they have so many ideas of cool things to do, but don’t know where to start or what would be most helpful
Key insight: people care about diversity in classical music
After interviewing a combination of music teachers, conductors, ensemble directors, and academics, one thing was clear: there is a real need for something like New Muses. Although their reasons vary, all the interviewees want to teach and program a more diverse group of composers. So why don’t they?
Key insight: finding new music is difficult!
I found two main factors for what stops people from teaching and programming music by more diverse composers.
“It just takes too long”
Lots of music teachers, conductors, and directors are already overworked and underpaid. They simply don’t have the time to spend hours and hours trawling through Google, not knowing whether it’ll pay off.
“I don’t know where to start”
There isn’t one central place where people can go to find new music. It’s complicated and overwhelming, so it’s easier to just stick to what you know.
Who are we designing for?
I made personas based on the three user groups that emerged in my research so that I could gain clarity on who I’m designing for and to be able to communicate my decisions with stakeholders more easily and effectively.
Music teachers and ensemble leaders are most impacted by how difficult it is to find new composers. Music teachers usually lead or conduct at least one ensemble at their school in addition to teaching their classes. Helping them is especially important because the impact would ripple out from them to their students.
Pain Points
So many factors to consider when choosing music to teach
Difficult and time consuming to find all the information they need - and this research is usually unpaid work
Limited time to choose pieces
Goals
Introduce students to a more diverse group of composers to help them feel represented
Program and teach music that students enjoy
Spend less time researching
Be able to figure out what a piece is like before they commit to buying it
How do teachers currently find music and decide what to program?
I created an ecosystem map to understand just how complicated this process really is. Teachers often have only two weeks to choose 4-5 pieces each for multiple ensembles. No wonder they stick to stuff they’ve done before!
This ecosystem map shows the user, a school music teacher, in the center and all of the tools and resources they interact with when choosing pieces for a concert. They interact with tools in the central rings more often and the outer rings less often.
Imperfect workarounds
Aside from the sheer complexity, these methods all have some major drawbacks. There isn’t a single place where teachers can reliably get answers to the questions that are most important to them:
Will my students enjoy playing this? Will they be able to play it?
Does this piece work with my budget and time constraints?
How Might New Muses be Able to Help?
By simplifying this process and providing information that actually answers these questions, New Muses could make it way easier for teachers to find new music to program.
Ideating potential solutions
How can we help teachers find all the information they need more quickly and all in one place?
Add filters to database
Allow users to find pieces more easily by adding filters like ensemble type, difficulty level, and featured instruments.
Forum to discuss pieces
Help teachers connect with others to get piece recommendations and ask questions about specific pieces.
User generated database
Build up a database that supports filtering by allowing people who have programmed pieces to share their experience of it.
A solution for New Muses and its users
I presented this shortlist of possible solutions to stakeholders and we worked together to figure out the best way forward. We agreed that adding filters to the database would be the most valuable solution, but it just wasn’t possible with the way their current database was set up.
With this constraint in mind, I recommended a user generated database. By gathering information about what pieces were like to program, we can:
Provide users with all the information they need to decide whether to program a piece in one place
Create a database structured in a way that will support helpful filters in the long-term
Development: Sharing and Presenting Information
What information do users need?
Teachers need a lot of information to figure out if a piece is going to meet their needs. I referenced my user interviews to define all the questions a teacher needs answers to before they can make a decision.
I worked with stakeholders to define what information should be crowdsourced, and what should be provided by the organization. To avoid incorrect information being uploaded, we determined that it’s most helpful for users to provide information about anything subjective or with lots of variation, like difficulty, rehearsal time needed, and enjoyment.
Multi-step form design
My design process here was extremely iterative. I regularly presented my work to stakeholders to get feedback and make sure we were on the same page. While designing the form, I kept these questions in mind:
How can questions be grouped together in a way that’s intuitive for the user?
How can we collect all the information we need without overwhelming the user?
How will teachers find this information?
I had to figure out how to present the community-data collected through the ‘share experience’ form and other relevant information about a piece and composer. At this stage, we wanted to take more of a blue-skies approach to figure out the long-term vision. I presented different approaches to stakeholders and we worked together to decide on an approach.
Designing a community forum
We decided to move forward with the idea of a community forum. The way I pitched it to stakeholders was like Reddit but each sub is dedicated to a specific composer or piece of music. We chose this solution because it:
Aligns strongly with the mission to help DEI work in classical music feel more like a movement
Allows users to quickly find relevant information through clear information architecture
Can save teachers time by replacing the many tools teachers currently use (Facebook groups, databases, etc.) with a one-stop shop that fulfils these different purposes
This is a massive undertaking, so I started by working out how someone would get to the ‘share experience’ flow.
Information architecture
I used this wireframe flow to create a sitemap for the community forum and identify the key screens I needed to design.
Based on my user research and suggestions from stakeholders, we decided that it would be helpful for some sub-forums to be dedicated to professional groups, like middle school teachers. However, as this wasn’t directly related to the ‘share experience’ form, it was outside the scope of this project.
How much information is too much?
Each composer or piece of music has a lot of information associated with it. If this wasn’t organized clearly, it could easily become overwhelming.
I sketched out different options to quickly iterate on ideas, including:
Filters
Tabs
Search within the page
I looked at other sites that teachers already use to get an idea of what navigation techniques they’re probably already familiar with.
What information do users need to accomplish specific tasks?
Some information may be relevant regardless of what task the user is trying to accomplish, but other information is very task specific.
1. Piece summary: always visible
Super important because it shows users where they are and contains key actions.
2. Tabs: task specific information
Information for specific tasks is grouped under tabs. Users can quickly skim the tab labels when they’re looking for something specific.
3. Additional information: always visible
This information can be useful for many tasks, so has to be visible regardless of what tab is selected. It is visually separate to prevent information overload.
On mobile, there was the additional challenge of limited space. I added in a higher level of tabs to distinguish between piece details and posts. This allows users to get to the information they need more quickly - and with less scrolling!
UI Design
Updating the visual design
New Muses already had some existing branding. I adjusted typography for clearer information hierarchy and tweaked colors to meet AAA accessibility guidelines.
I also simplified the color palette. Having a deep purple gradient background was too visually overwhelming, so I:
Changed the background to a pale grey
Used the primary purple to strategically highlight key interactions and information
As the organization had never worked with a designer before, I provided them with a robust UI Kit that included a style guide and components guidelines. I wanted to set them up for success even after our work together came to an end!
Delivery: Testing & Priority Iterations
I conducted moderated usability testing with four participants to test:
How easily can users navigate through the site?
Are we collecting the right information in the share experience form?
Can users easily understand and answer all the questions in the form?
I tested two tasks, both of which had a 100% completion rate:
Search for Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and explain how you’d find her pieces
Share your experience of performing Harpsichord Suite no. 1 in D minor by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre
Key findings from usability testing
Overall, it was clear we were on the right track, but I identified two areas for improvement.
“This would stop me from filling out the form.”
Teachers are nervous about sharing detailed information about borrowing scores because of legality issues.
“What skill level are the performers?”
Difficulty level is really subjective. For this information to be meaningful, teachers need to know the skill level of the performers.
Priority iteration 1: obtaining the score
This was vital to address because it could stop teachers from filling out the form! It could also dramatically affect how much they trust New Muses. I addressed this by:
Making all follow-up questions about obtaining a score optional
Adding a tool-tip to explain why we’re asking for this information and how it will be used
Priority iteration 2: describing performer skill level
Knowing if a piece is an appropriate difficulty level is vital. It’s also really subjective. There’s no standardized way of measuring skill. The closest thing is music grading systems, but there are so many of these across different countries - and five just in the UK!
How do you describe something subjective in a way that’s meaningful regardless of the music education system someone is familiar with?
To answer this fully, I would need to conduct more research. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do that within the scope of this project, but wanted to include something, even though it wasn’t a perfect solution.
These categories are vague and subjective and to be honest, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement here. I tied the categories to ABRSM grades because my preliminary research showed that this is the most widely used grading system, although it still isn’t universal. This is definitely the area I would most want to improve!
Results: Positive Impact for Users and New Muses
“A game changer in music education”
While these designs haven’t gone into production yet, the feedback from my usability testers gave me a sense of the potential impact this project could have. Teachers shared that a site like this would:
Save them time
Simplify their process of finding music
Make them more likely to program and teach works by composers they weren’t already familiar with
Supporting New Muses reach their goals
One of the most significant outcomes of this project was establishing a market need and validating New Muses’ ideas. At the start of the project, the organization didn’t know what ideas to pursue or even how useful this product would be. Now they have clearly defined target users and an understanding of how New Muses can help them.
Having quotes from real people about how this website would impact them was incredibly helpful to share with stakeholders. I was able to show that we’re on the right track to meeting both user and organizational needs.
“This user feedback will be so helpful when we’re fundraising to show donors the kind of impact New Muses Project can have.”
Gloria Yin, New Muses Project Co-Founder, Technical Director, and Co-Artistic Director
Next steps
There’s always more to be done, especially with a project like this that was so focused on big-picture strategy and blue-skies thinking. Now that we have a clearer idea of the long-term vision, these are the next steps we want to work on:
Integrate the ‘share experience’ form into the existing site
Figure out a better way to measure skill level
Thoughts & Reflections
I learned a lot throughout this project! Here are my two biggest takeaways:
Clearly defining the problem and target user is key: research is time consuming, but it really pays off! Gaining clarity helps you to prioritize, instead of wanting to do everything (and therefore struggling to do anything)
Meeting the needs of the user and the organization: the part of this project I’m most proud of is how the ‘share experience’ form both helps users find information they need and helps New Muses tackle their most pressing challenge: not having the resources to add all this information to their database themselves