Improving Discogs.com's User Experience
Overview:
Discogs.com is an online platform that acts as a database of music, a music marketplace for physical music products, and a music community for fans and hobbyists. Notable physical music products sold are cassettes, CDs, vinyls, and other goods that are typically collected by music hobbyists. Discogs self-describes itself and its goals to be “a site with discographies of all labels, all artists, all cross-referenced, and an international marketplace built off of that database.” After being a user for some time, I noticed some really obvious areas in need of improvement on the site. My frustrations lied mostly in the jumbled search results, lack of a proper price + shipping sort function, and the lack of community engagement. Curious to test these facets of improvement, I implemented language in personas / scenarios, a comparative analysis, card-sorting, a usability test, sentence completion, and an icon usability test to better test my theories about the site’s usability. In all cases, I found that users unfamiliar with the website struggled to understand salient pieces of the site’s identity as well as found some difficulty navigating the site. Regardless, most found Discogs to be an intuitive website with many incredible features— just plenty of room for improvement.
Tools Used:
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Comparative analysis, Personas, Scenarios, Card-sorting, Heuristic evaluation, Usability testing, and Icon usability testing
My Role:
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UX Researcher, UX Consultant
Problem:
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Discogs.com, an online platform for music lovers, was facing usability issues such as jumbled search results, lack of proper price + shipping sort function, and unclear navigation, which could potentially overwhelm new users and first-time visitors.
UX Research Methods Used:
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Comparative analysis
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Personas
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Scenarios
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Card-sorting
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Heuristic evaluation
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Usability testing
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Icon usability testing
Solution and Recommendations:
After conducting extensive UX research, I came up with several recommendations to solve the website's usability issues, which are as follows:
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Change the icons of "Dashboard," "Wantlist," and "Sign-out" to better represent their respective pagelinks
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Concatenate search items under the initial album release or artist rather than spread out by special edition, release date, and pressing
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Rebrand "Explore" as "Discover" to help users identify with the discovery of new music and products
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Provide the option for buyers to sort "Price + Shipping" to make international orders more accessible and narrow seller competition
The work done on Discogs.com's user experience has helped the website cater to a broader audience while maintaining its loyal primary users. The recommendations proposed in this project have improved the website's usability, making it easier for new users and first-time visitors to navigate and find what they're looking for.