Raga | Portfolio

UX Case Study / Mobile Application

Identify Carnatic raga and songs effortlessly with our platform

Year

2021-22

Client

For a start up

Role

UX and UI design

Team

2 designers and 3 developers

Scope

UX Strategy and Visual Design

Background

Learning the art of music is no small feat and comes only with practice and perseverance. In the context of Classical music, identifying 'Raga' (melodic framework for improvisation akin to a melodic mode in Indian classical music) is an integral and fundamental part of the learning process and there is currently no mechanism of identifying a 'Raga' without the 'Guru' (Teacher/Expert in the field). Also, there is no platform which can recognise music without a part of the entire music track being played. Hence, true learning is only possible in the presence of a ‘Guru’ and it is impossible to identify a ‘Raga’ for a person without any prior classical music experience. This also means that a person without prior classical music knowledge will not be able to completely comprehend the art form and understand the fundamentals of the art to truly indulge and enjoy the art form.

Secondary Research

To get a good understanding about Carnatic music, singers, Ragas, current learning practice, beliefs and the Carnatic music community we read research papers, articles and information present in google.
Next, we came up with “how might we” statements.

Competitive Analysis

After the secondary research we found out that Shazam, Soundhound and Genius are the primary competitor.

Offline mode that keep the detected music on a queue and once the user comes online add it to Library.

User interface is confusing and lot of features are hidden.

Sometimes gives a wrong song when using ‘discover’ function

Ads interrupt the experience of looking at the lyrics

User Interview

We interviewed 5 participants to know more about Carnatic Raga and learning Carnatic music. Found below interesting data-

Painpoints

It takes 30 second to 1 minute to identify the Raaga for the professionals and might take an hour for the newbies.

Teacher’s help is needed to identify raga or swara.

Carnatic musicians does not have data repository to learn raga.

Musicians and hobbyist love to have concert booking platform
and upcoming concert notification.

Professional and amateur musicians wants to have Riyaaz like
the Hindustani musicians.

Carnatic musicians and teachers are traditional and orthodox.

It takes 2-3 years to learn Swara and basic ragas.

Advanced Carnatic music knowledge is passed to very certain
group of people and teachers.

Empathy Map

Persona

User Journey Map

Card Sorting

Initially tried conducting open card sorting to participants but it did not go as I planned. As an action plan, Started exploring free card sorting tools. Finally finalised Xsort as it was free to use.