Freegal UI/UX Revision
This is freegal music, http://www.freegalmusic.com/*,it's a free music streaming and download site available to library account holders. I've decided to show a concept of how I would redesign it, for increased usability, if given the chance.
As it stands now, its main use is to look up music you know - not discover other music you might like - which is difficult due to a convoluted system of search results.
*These comments and images reflect an earlier version of the site. The new version does improve the usability to a degree but many of the same problems remain.
As you can see, there is not a consistent way to present search results.
Adding to the confusion:
-
When clicking on the video page link in the header, the display is a grid with a horizontal scroll and no way to search within the page.
-
Searching for music on one of the vertical scrolls can be difficult as the right click option doesn't exist and going back to the search results will always take you to the beginning of the search.
I conducted user tests on the site as well and these are some of things I observed/the users stated:
-
The download button is not easily found, nor is information about the amount of downloads you are allotted.
-
It is not clear that videos can only be downloaded, not streamed.
-
Need a way to request songs.
-
New releases need to be highlighted.
-
Could use more options when filtering songs (e.g. by popularity.)
-
Give more options when presenting the most popular (100 vs 10) and have it go by the entire population instead of just people from the same library.
-
Have artists represented by images instead of text to make it easier to find when scanning.
Landing Page
All user info is now in one spot with the wishlist now being part of the profile menu accessed by clicking on the user name
Users have the options to request music
Users have increased ability and ease to find out about new music, music recently added to the site and recommendations based upon their ratings and it can all be filtered based upon artist, album or song.
Search Results
The search results are simplified with everything stacked vertically and separated by the type of result.
Artist Page
Similar to the search results the artist page is now stacked vertically, categorized by album.
Since videos are just songs presented in another media, I did not make them separate entities from songs just part of the them. So by searching a song, the user is also searching for more than one way to experience it.
The video also includes a download button plus text indicating that can be downloaded only.
Final Draft
Final version of the revision. With this version I included logos for artists instead of text to make it easier when someone familiar with the artists is scanning.
