"I want to success, but I don't know what to do and how should I do?"


Through surveys, user interviews, and the lesson completion data, we found that the contents were not delivered in a way that could help users learn violin effectively and efficiently. Users struggled to determine if they were ready to advance and lacked ways to make improvements. Through communication with violin educators, we realized that the contents weren’t aligned with their teaching philosophy. The App is effective at communicating music concepts and demonstrating technical skills to users, but failed to inform users ways to improve their skills, nor interactively help them practice.

We kicked off the project with three productive meetings among the product owner Sam, violin educators Geoff and Rachel, the developer Vish, the videographer Orel, and myself. During the first meeting, we started with discussions on missing contents from the current lesson plan and new skills and features to be included. However, due to the complex nature and different perspectives of the group, after a couple of hours of discussion, we didn’t find a satisfactory way to resolve our issues. At that point, we were showing users plenty of content, but we didn’t find a way for users to effectively and efficiently digest these contents. As a violin learner and designer, I was able to visualize in my mind what was discussed, and simultaneously transform the information into wireframes mentally. So I thought I could contribute from a more practical perspective. I asked the group to imagine that they are the learners and hope to play a song that they love, what would they want to do. This question stimulated good conversations and finally led to the song-based lesson plan strategy, where for each song, we ask the users to listen to the song, understand related theory/skills, Exercise, and at last play the song with our playboard. I was happy that, though I wasn’t a violin specialist, I was able to guide our conversation by thinking constructively and by putting myself in the shoes of our users. 

My quick ideation during the meeting. I grouped the contents into three categories to learn, exercise, and play. The concept was accepted by the team and we were on the right track at this point

As the discussions continued, I started to get a sense that involving violin educators to the UX ideation exercise was not the best idea. They were professionals to teach violin but had no experience in visualizing their teaching method with a digital product. Therefore, I suggested that instead of having them develop details on how each lesson should look like in the app, a better way was to have the violin educators take 3 sample songs and work out the contents for each song. From there I would then started my design process from the information architecture. This piece of advice turned the whole process much more efficient.

The content list was worked out by my teammates. The level 1 course was all about the fundamentals, teaching people basic concepts and postures. The levels afterward would be learning songs.

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After organizing all the contents for level 1 (Fundamentals) in a clear and logical structure, and understanding user’s learning journey, I came up with two concepts. However, by talking to Sam, I realized the levels other than level 1 were actually the core value of the new change. These levels were the core in teaching users play and users should spend most of their time on them by practicing with a playboard. Therefore, I did a card sorting exercise again for a song course and sketched out a concept where I categorized the contents into Learn, Play, and Exercise. 

Left: The two concepts I generated for level 1 content
Right: The concept I came up in the discussion with Sam

Based on the concept, I quickly drew it out into wireframes. Users would start from INTRO, and the CTA on the top part would always show the next lesson to start. After INTRO, it is the LEARN lessons. Once the LEARN lesson was done, it moved to the bottom of the page in a new category called "REVIEW". Once users complete all the lessons, the top section would be the playboard afterward. The user would always come back to quickly start practice.

The preliminary wireframes of my concept
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In the meantime, Geoff, the violin educator, worked on the lesson plan. Based on my concept, he categorized the lessons into Learn, Play, Exercise. However, there were a few issues. There appeared to be too many lessons for each song. The “Learn” lessons and “Exercise” lessons were mixed up and it was hard to fit them into the new lesson structure designed by me. I tried to optimize the wireframe to support the lesson plan, but I’m also cautious about the shortcomings of the lesson plan from the user experience standing point. To resolve those issues I initiated a conversation with Geoff and other stakeholders. Finally, we agreed on simplifying the lesson plan to provide users a more intuitive learning experience and help them focus on practice rather than watching tutorials. 

Lesson Plan I got from violin educators

Based on the new lesson plan, I created the 2nd round wireframe

I truly enjoyed being part of the project from day one. As a team, we collaborated closely with each other and found solutions to address our issues in an efficient manner. Despite various challenges, I was able to step up on multiple occasions, think critically and creatively, to help move the project forward. I’m particularly proud to be able to influence the decisions by putting myself in the shoes of users.

I had no struggle in visual design for this project as it had similarities to an earlier project. On top of making the visual design consistent and elegant, I also made sure that my user interfaces worked to create a fluent user experience. In order to achieve a top-class user interface experience, I consulted experts in this field with more experiences and explored various design communities to collect useful feedback and advice.

I applied the style guide to wireframes and tested with different visual options

The Mockups I delivered to the the development team

The new design was released on Dec 16, 2019. With the new learning experience, users are now completing an average of 24 lessons per week, up from 7 before the release. The team was very pleased with this result.