Open Music Archive
An introduction into Information Architecture and Prototyping for an online music archive platform
Individual Project
The following tools were used for the completion of the project : Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator & Optimal Workshop
BACKGROUND
The Open Music Archive site was created by Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive, 2005), but the content that is found on the site is not all necessarily owned by them. Because the purpose of the site is to simply be a vehicle for providing users with music made by others... the artists still technically own the music, but legally it can be downloaded and used by anyone because it is out of copyright. The content is therefore a database of recordings made by many different artists, it can be added to and subtracted from. After looking at the site, it can be concluded that the quality and consistency of the information, the tagging process and the structure of the site could do with some improvements
THE PROBLEM
The Open Music Archive (OMA) website is severely outdated and complicated. It's navigation system is confusing for users and the way that its content is sorted does not follow any clear system or hierarchy. Users are unable to browse through various music items with any filters, the tagging system is unstructured and the whole website does not function as one cohesive whole.
The Current Open Music Archive homepage
THE PROCESS
Usability testing, Card sorting, competitive analysis and a Heuristics analysis on the current Open Music Archive site were conducted before the prototyping process began. Thereafter, personas, a needs statement, and a prototyping process were carried out using the findings to design a better and more ideal user experience, using iteration and feedback to produce interactive designs as a proposed solution to the user needs.
PERSONAS
The following persona was developed based on the competitive analysis and background research of Open Music Archive
NEEDS STATEMENT
Users need a simple way of accessing and downloading free, out-of-copyright recordings so that they can use them in the production of various media items such as videos and films.
SITEMAP
I created a sitemap in order to plan the structure of the website, illustrating the top and bottom navigation, as well as the different pages and access points.
FINAL SOLUTION
The in depth research process, as well as a information architecture were used to come up with the redesign of the Open Music Archive website. Content structuring was crucial, ensuring that the redesign met both user and stakeholder needs. Due to the scope of the project, only two pages were chosen for design - The homepage, and the browse page.
