KMusic Album
Role: UX Designer
Date: 2019
Category: Wechat Mini Program | Community Product
Project Background
In 2019, there were 249 million people in China over the age of 60, of which 59 million are netizens, and the growth rate of silver-haired netizens had reached 39.9%, becoming the largest new group on the Internet in China.
Among the Chinese silver-hair groups, the production and consumption of audio and video contents has become one of the most important Internet leisure and entertainment scenarios, with obvious head effect and fierce competition; However, the products for silver-haired netizens in the market are highly alike in terms of products and contents, so there is still a lot of room for entry.
Kmusic Album is a WeChat Mini Program for middle-aged and elderly users to produce and consume short-form video contents. Kmusic Album aims to optimize the elder-oriented experience of products, and establish a high-level standard of short-form video contents providing for the target group to seize market opportunities.
Design Analysis
Compared with mainstream mass groups, the capabilities of middle-aged and elderly silver-haired groups (aging above 40) in terms of sense, cognition, and motion have declined and lacked. In the process of the project, the first challenge we met was how to cross the age difference, build empathy with the silver-haired group, and understand the their real needs and wants.
We have done a lot of qualitative and quantitative user research through focus groups, in-depth interviews, questionnaire surveys, and literature studies to gain a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the physical, mental, and emotional characteristics of the silver-hair group.
Afterwards, we sorted out the collected user information into an empathy map. By constructing a concrete persona of the silver-hair user group, the whole project team could understand the behavior and needs of our target user better. The empathy map helped designers generate insight and guided us to innovate.
After synthesizing the output of user analysis, we found that the silver-hair group still have the positive acquisition and development needs while they are facing the gradual lack of cognition, sense and motion resources.
From this, we finally defined our design goals:
Design Strategy & Implementation
I. Unobstructed design
Reduce difficulties in cognition
Since the elderly people have a certain degree of decline in cognition than the general people, in order to accurately and efficiently find an effective design solution suitable for the elderly, base on the cognitive characteristics of the silver-hair group, we conducted a series of a / b tests to verify the design ideas of specifying abstract concept, and highlighting the endorsement of authority and acquaintances, so as to promote the iterative optimization of products.
Reduce difficulties in motion
Since the the elderly people have inconvenience in the manipulation of the fingers using mobile devices, in terms of interaction design, we have adopted the principle of "choose not to type", and have added "one-click comment" and "one-click template change" shortcuts, aiming to reduce the work burden for elderly users. And in terms of user interface design, we have expanded the clickable target area, enlarged and spaced the buttons, menu options, links and texts to make it easier for elderly users to operate.
Reduce difficulties in sense
In regard to the elderly people’s problem of the gradual loss of vision and the dullness of color vision, we have built visual design strategies such as using large font sizes and large elements, enhancing color contrast, and avoiding using the blue color which is difficult for the elderly to recognize.
II. Design to satisfy positive emotion
The acquisition and development needs of the elderly people can be summarized into three types involving "me", "others", and "me-others interaction". The needs for "self-interest" can be self-expressed and self-realized through the creation of work. In order to meet the needs of "altruism" and maintain social relations, we have optimized the sharing and socializing experience for the silver-haired group.
Project Achievements
Since Kmusic Album launched, it has iterated three major versions. The core product metrics: the production amount per day has increased by 354.5%, the production amount/ DAU has increased by 82.4%, and the Customer Satisfaction Index has increased by 34%.
Aiming to achieving continuous user growth , our team is developing a product matrix that meets various subdivision scenarios. The design guidelines for the elderly users explored in this Kmusic Album project will help us to promote the design efficiency and quality of other matrix products in the future.