Project Plan 1

My personal development goals:

Firstly i would like to gain more knowledge in the business side of the product development. Improving that knowledge would boost some confidence and would able me to help businesses to make good decisions on that direction. It seems tom me like it is the skill that is more and more expected from the interaction designer in the future. Secondly i would like to work through the necessary steps that the proper product design process needs. Thirdly i would like to meet new awesome, interesting, inspiring friends and of course enjoy the whole design process.

Project Topic:

Music industry (with that term i mean the whole scene involved from publishers to artist and everything in between) is in the new big cycle of changes on philosophical (democratization and what is the future role of the artist eg.) and on value level (monetization eg.). There are lots of challenges and chances to help and improve the situation but i will focus on one as soon as I have conducted the first interviews with the target groups. According to that i can validate my assumptions and to be sure that i focus on problem worth solving!

Background/Intro:

Introduction of the streaming and music sharing platform Napster (1999) pushed the music industry into the next big change cycle after the boom of CD-s (1982-1999). People involved have still not found their new roles and settled the ground under their feet. Everybody are kind of headless.

The power have shifted and many say that situation is democratized. Meaning that on the booming era of physical music formats (vinyls from 1950-… and CD-s from 1982-1999) the decision power (because of the production cost) of who might be heard on who not laid on the hands of few big record labels. Nowadays it is possible to gain a lot of audience with the minimum cost (eg. Soundcloud rappers) from your bedroom. On the other hand it had lead to the situation where a lot of music released online is mostly on very poor quality level. So the new gatekeepers are curators behind online music channels (on Youtube eg.), blogs (Pitchfork eg.) and streaming platforms (Spotify eg.) who are funneling the best gems (from their subjective point of view) to the audience. To be mentioned that the quite same tendencies appear to be happening currently at the film industry.

Objectives:

My goal is to enhance the life of the independent artists. On the other hand i would like to look the situation through the eyes of service provider. Outcome should be near future vision and concept with prototype.

Project scope:

In this project i am focused on artists and musicians through the eyes of service provider (as mentioned above). The service can be streaming platform, workshop, network or some other solution in that direction.
The aim is to develop a product that carries a strong vision for future and inspires people involved in the field. Considering the time limits it has to be most probably solution (with some tangible examples) on concept level.

Initial hypothesis and challenges:

It feels like one big question in this topic is the attitude change. Is it possible? How and in what direction may change the attitude of listeners to the music they consume and how to normalize it? Same questions go to musicians, artists, publishers and other platforms. It may lead to debates that are hard to summary with given time frame. Seems like it would be wise to take one sharp focus and develop point of view around that. So it would be hopefully something that can inspire debates and have an potential for the further development.

Methodological choices:

First step should be qualitative research. Interviews with the people in the target group to find overlapping pain points and challenges. From the findings found can be developed first vision concept and why not some quick first sketches for different solutions. It is better to talk with people if there is something to show so they can grasp also the potentials of the concept visually. Process will be iterative. Every step of new concept and sketch improvements will be tested or shown to the target group to improve the solution accordingly. The process will be repeated in the timeframe set.