How can we encourage artists to actively engage with communities of fans and supporting brands?
Challenge
Crowdmix was a large, fast growing, well funded startup, developing a social music app. When I started it was fully focused on developing the digital product, while the end-to-end service has not been defined yet.
The main focus was on creating a great app optimised for 1000s of artists and 100,000s of fans, while everything that needs to happen to get the artists, their agents, sponsor brands and fans to join the service and actively engage with users has not been defined yet.
My goal was to introduce the leadership and the teams to service design thinking, build empathy with each user type in product teams, define the service proposition and end-to-end omni-channel experience for each user type and what people, processes and technology needs to be in place to support the service.
Client: Crowdmix
Role: Service Design Lead, User Researcher
September 2015 —
March 2016
London
Approach
How do we make sure that the cross-functional teams create the best user experience for talent and fans?
Understanding how music industry works
The majority of team members did not come from the music industry, and had a limited understanding of the users we were designing for. It was important to get to know each user type and build empathy with them in cross-functional product teams, so that they could make better creative decisions when designing and developing the product.
Interviews with music industry experts: I interviewed Crowdmix advisors, coming from leadership positions in music labels to really understand how the music industry works, core roles and their relationships, motivations, contexts, and values.
Interviews with artists, bands, managers and producers: I talked with artists and their agents to understand their day in life, how they create, perform, promote and monetise music, and how they engage with fans. I also tested Crowdmix value proposition ideas to see what would make it valuable enough for them to sign up and regularly engage with their fans using the app.
I documented the learnings of how the music industry works in an Ecosystem Map.
It shows who artists interact with, when creating, performing, producing, promoting or monetising their music, contexts where and when it happens, what physical and digital things they user in the process, why and how they do it. What did our stakeholders think?
“I have worked in the music industry for 20 years and I have never seen it presented so simply”
Rob Wells, previously President: Global Digital Business at Universal Music
Why the ecosystem map was useful:
The ecosystem map provides a high level overview of the music industry world and helped to introduce team members to the users and relationships we are designing for.
It helped to plan what user types, organisations and context of use we aimed to support in each release, and to create a road map while looking at the bigger picture (for example, the yellow cells where the areas of our focus for launch).
It helped to focus each team’s attention on a specific scenario, e.g. one team may design the way Crowdmix app is used by fans at a live concert, and another — on the way artist managers post social updates on tour.
Service Ecosystem Map shows actors and stakeholders they interact with, their actions, motivation and contexts.
How do we get artists, agents, producers, influencers, brand sponsors and fans to use Crowdmix?
Value Exchange Map, all entities and all value types
Refining value proposition
When I started, company leadership held strong opinions about the value proposition, which were not fully aligned.
There was no single and easy way to explain the proposition, that everyone agreed on.
To get clarity on the value proposition and facilitate stakeholder alignment I created a value exchange map.
Through individual discussions we gradually built our collective understanding of the value each user type gives, receives or accumulates by using the service.
The core value types we identified: money, music and social content, attention, social capital, introductions, music and user data insights.
As the model became increasingly complex, we found it more useful to look at specific facets, for example the value exchange between Crowdmix and all types of users and partners, or looking how a particular value, e.g., money or content flows through this system, where it originates from and who accumulates it (illustrated below).
Shared understanding of the value proposition, the business offers to each user type, helped us create, test and refine marketing materials and approaches used by talent management teams when engaging with potential users, to test value hypotheses.
Value Exchange Map, Crowdmix: this map shows the value provided and received by Crowdmix when engaging with core types of users and business partners, with interpretation on the right.
Value Exchange Map, Money: this map illustrates main sources of money in this ecosystem: fans and brands, how the money flows through the system and who accumulates it.
Value Exchange Map, Content: this map shows how all types of music content are created, channelled and delivered to fans, whether it is live performance, recording, streaming or downloads.
How do we build business operations and technology solutions to enable Crowdmix experience?
Defining end-to-end service experience and organisational blueprint
I mapped out the end-to-end experience for talent, influencers, brands and fans and created a blueprint, defining processes and technology platforms needed for each step.
I defined backstage processes that make the desired experience possible, including what each employee needs to do at each stage using each channel; what technology platforms, functionality features and capabilities needs to be in place to support each step in the process.
Experience Map shows experience of talent and influencers using the service
Service Blueprint shows what each supporting role needs to do to provide the service, flows and dependencies.
We used the Experience Map & Blueprint in many ways.
Providing a full overview of the service:
the blueprint helped to share the bigger picture and explain the end-to-end service to the team.
Product Roadmap and sprint planning: product managers could use it to choose areas of focus for each sprint in the context of the overall journey to see any similarities and dependencies.
Tracking progress of each feature or capability:
Another way of using a Blueprint is to provide an overview of product delivery progress at a glance.
I printed stickers with progress status values — not defined, not started, in progress, developed and tested, and ready to launch — so that people working on the features could update their status as they progressed.
Ownership of features: I also printed stickers with faces and names of people accountable and responsible for each feature or touchpoint, so if anyone had questions, they knew who to ask. Adding real faces made the Blueprint more engaging, and people liked going to check where everyone’s the faces were.
Experience Map and Blueprint are live documents, reflecting shared understanding of the overall service, and to remain relevant and valuable they need to be kept up-to-date. It is essential that updating is easy and people see value in seeing their area of work in the context of the overall product / service.
Outcomes
Shared understanding of the music industry and core user types in cross-functional teams.
Helped to clarify value proposition
— facilitated senior stakeholder alignment and shared understanding of the value proposition
— provided input to marketing team and talent engagement team to flesh out and test value propositions
Defined end-to-end experience for each user type: talent, influencers, brands and fans.
Helped defining workflows, processes and technology, as well as team structures, processes and incentives for everyone involved in providing the service.
Helped with planning areas of focus for product development and track progress.
As a service design lead on this project, I helped business leadership translate their vision and intentions into a detailed service proposition, and facilitated alignment around shared understanding, to help them plan the roadmap for taking the product forward.