Instrurent
TL;DR: Instrurent is a peer to peer rental platform that allows musicians to rent a musical instrument and/or rent out their own spare musical instrument.
Overview
Instrurent, a passion project, was my first UX Case study. I was the sole UX Designer for a span of 3 months. My roles revolved around the entire spectrum of UX research and design.
Extra Baggage
23 kgs
$50/bag
Extra Seat
Economy
$350/seat
Instrument Baggage
Oversized
$75/bag
Why Instrurent?
Let's meet Daniel. Daniel is a musician who is studying classical guitar at the Berkeley College of Music. It is summer time and he wants to enjoy the California weather. He plans to fly from Boston to San Francisco.
Daniel is all set to go! But wait, Air Zephyr is allowing only 1 personal bag for Daniel to carry with him. But Daniel needs to practice his guitar before the start of his next semester. What are his options?
Such expensive options to just carry his guitar around! There should be better options for Daniel.
Inefficient Team Management
The biophysicists at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (UIUC) faced challenges in effective management due to the absence of a suitable interface for team management.
Inefficient Simulation Workflow
Inefficient resource utilization
How might we solve for the problems faced by musicians while traveling, so that they can have access to musical instruments wherever they go?
Research
Daniel was not alone in experiencing hassles while traveling with a musical instrument. Interviews with 10 musicians revealed important pain points.
Jake
I travel via flight for performances. Once, I had to argue with the airline staff regarding the safety of the instrument.
Nick
I had to shift to another city, but couldn’t take my keyboard along with me. I purchased a secondhand keyboard there, which costed me INR 6000.
Samantha
I thought of renting a guitar once, for a trip. Enough options were not available. Ended up purchasing a cheap guitar from OLX for 1500 INR.
Online surveys with 30 more musicians gave me quantitative data to validate findings from my user interviews.
71.4%
Respondents wanted to play their musical instrument wherever they travel.
91.7%
Respondents mentioned that there was no other alternative than to pay extra at the airport.
62.5%
Respondents mentioned that they travel to various parts of their country, revealing a wide market opportunity.
Key Findings
Besides the expensive options that Daniel had, musicians like him also face concerns about instrument safety during flights and often resort to buying second-hand instruments.
Ideation
To address the woes of musicians when they travel with their instruments, I brainstormed ideas through the ideation process, to figure out what features would work to solve the user pain points.
Musicians like Daniel wouldn't fancy disassembled musical instruments. To figure out which ideas are meaningful, I evaluated them in terms of their value and the complexity in execution.
Key Findings
Weighing the ideas with respect to value and the complexity of its execution gave a clear picture of which idea would be feasible to implement. 'Renting from local musicians' clearly had the highest value and the lowest complexity.
The "Evaluate Price" feature determines a fair rental price based on the instrument's details.
"Play Sound" feature, and provision to upload sound clips ensures renters can verify the instrument quality before renting.
Sketching
Renting musical instruments locally eliminates the need for musicians to travel with their gear, solving common travel hassles. I visualized this concept by sketching out a few low-fidelity screens.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Usability Testing
In order to gauge if Daniel would be happy with the solution, I conducted usability testing with 5 musicians, from whom I received valuable feedback for further iterations.
Users did not make use of ‘Listings’ and ‘Rentals’ subpages from the bottom nav bar.
Users found the flow of renting out their instruments boring and cumbersome to complete.
Users liked the ‘Play Sample Sound’ and the rental pricing control features.
Some users thought that asking about ‘type of instrument’ would be better than asking about ‘category’ of musical instrument in the 'Rent Out' flow of the application.
Great! Now Daniel can be carefree, travel light, and rent musical instruments at a reasonable rental price, in his location of interest.
Product Page
Musical instrument listed for rent by a local person, ensuring low rental price, and ratings and play sample sound to ensure the quality of the instrument.
Explore Page
Musical instruments listed for rent by local people, ensuring low rental prices.
Renting Out
Evaluation of rental price according to instrument details provided by the owner.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
Reflections
01.
Since this was my first UX case study, I discovered the criticality of prioritizing user perspectives in all UX endeavors.
02.
I learned the importance of user testing as it revealed flaws I was unaware of, helping me avoid potential later-stage costs.
03.
Structuring UX research interview questions proved challenging due to the need to avoid leading the interviewees to specific answers.
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