Groups
Introducing the MVP community feature to Smule platforms
Introducing the MVP community feature to Smule platforms
About Smule
Smule is a music-based social network with 50 million monthly active users. People make friends through collab with each other. The belief is music is more than just listening — music also includes creating, sharing, discovering, participating and connecting. Music is the original social network, with the power to break down barriers, touch souls, and bring people from all over the world together.
Design Lead
Interview, Survey, Competitor Analysis, IA, UX Flow, Wireframe, Prototype
3 months
I worked with the Growth team in 2018. The team was responsible for social engagement. While we know users organize communities outside of the platform, we wanted to bring engagement back to Smule so we decided to initiate the MVP called Groups. Our hypothesis was that if users join a community on Smule, it will not only increase social engagement but long term retention.
The challenge was to find the right direction and seamlessly introduce the MVP in 3 months while creating a solid foundation for the community that’s generic enough for different user segments.
The feature launched on November 2018. Currently available on iOS and Android and web.
At the outset of the project we didn’t have a clear picture about the existing community experience. What we know is that they create an additional shared VIP account as a workaround. You can see how creative our users are. :)
Without pre-existing insights, I did user research to drive the planning phase by starting interviewing power users who are in the community. The goals were to understand their journey of becoming a group member from new users perspective, pain points, and the core value of the community.
Mutual background and similar music tastes allow people to constantly find relevant content to collaborate and become friends to support each other.
New Users
Power Users
A page that offers users freedom to build their communities to socialize around any topics or interests on Smule. It solves for lack of relevant fresh content to engage through human curated approach, opens up a new paradigm for people to showcase the talent and have a better chance to be discovered, and get support from similar minded people.
The main focused areas
Owners can go to Explore page to create a group. The Creation entry point is intentionally buried to balance the qulity of the community.
It accommodates all users, members, and owners' use cases with three types of access. It's designed to help people quickly understand what the community is about and make informed decisions to become a member or not.
The admin tool allows owners to manage the group bio, access levels, members, and content.
Multiple entry points are provided to solve the discoverbility issue. Users can learn about the community by themselves through Explore and Profile. They can also learn from others via an invite or chat message.
To participate, users can either request on the Group page or get invited by the owner.
Profile is the dedicated place for users to easily access groups that are relevant to them.
Through the human curated approach, members can select recordings to post and engage with similar minded singers.
Responsive web is served as a supplement for the consumption experience.
The process were mainly around narrowing down the scope, identifying the high risk areas, and coordinating with other two PMs to negotiate and prioritize the most feasible solution.
Based on the high-level scope, the flow covered 3 user roles with 3 types of access. It included the following important aspects:
Within 3 months, we saw a diversity of communities thrive. Early data results show people who are in the community have more than +19% increase in follows. In early this year, the MVP was released on Android. With feature parity across mobile platforms, the next step is to improve discoverability and keep the community engaged.
