Case Study
— a secondary title for the project.
[A]
The following is a case study done for the Google UX Design Certification course from Coursera, using a pre-existing app: Apple Music, to make it more functional for performance-based athletes who needs music for their day-to-day training. At the ice rink, music is at the heart of every practice and performance. Being able to play music for skaters' performances is the main source of their practice, and making the process seamless is the primary pain point of the user experience—but volunteers, coaches, and skaters often struggle with the current system. This was a multi-month long project that was an opportunity for UX practice to drive product decisions based on user sentiment, feedback, and testing.
[B]
As a figure skating coach, I experienced these gaps first-hand and set out to explore how Apple Music could better serve athletes—giving them independence, seamless music playback, and competition-like features that help them perform with confidence. I took on the responsibilities for designing the UX, storyboarding, wireframes, and app experience to make the app have a more general use of music aside from being a streaming platform.
[C]
UX Designer, Researcher, Figure Skating Coach
Why Apple Music for Athletes?
[D]
Where most music apps for performance-based athletes have key features for specific playback and inputting original music, it falls short as a tool for simulating live performances and collaborating with others for a shared playlist of the athletes’ music. Apple Music already offers a strong UI for music discovery, playlist creation, and collaboration with sharing music without the need of cloud-based or internet-based platforms, as well as seamless integration with other products like the Apple Watch for music and health–both of which can be useful for athletes. With their notable features alongside its inclusion of being able to add original music from the desktop version, I decided to expand upon these features to make it more utilized for performance-based athletes.
[fig 1] Caption here.