Tuesday

I’m sick today, and won’t be moving more than about 12 feet from my bed. So I won’t be in class. I know I missed several days for our group. I’m really sorry. We need to set up a meeting sometime outside of class in the next week. I pray I’ll be functional by then (hopefully tomorrow).

Hope to see you soon,

Samuel Brown

PRI Blog

Predispositions
-People don’t like clutter
-People like things to be easy
-Users don’t like to wait

Research
-Users like to customize
-Users find the page overwhelming

Insights
-adding customization features might lessen user frustration
-the current home page has distracting ads
-users don’t want to see products they aren’t interested in

Concepts
-allow users to choose what types of products are recommended
-make recommendations based on previous purchases
-use popup ads rather than embedding them in the page
-optimize search feature to find things faster

PRI Components

Predispositions
- Users like to get things done quickly
- Users don’t like to be confused

Research
- Users think the interface is cluttered
- Users would like the homepage to be more customizable

Insights
- Users would like the option to personalize the hompage
- Users skip the homepage and go straight to the searchbar

Concepts
- Let the users control the number of boxes on the homepage
- Make a box that suggests music based upon users’ libraries
- Create a tutorial that teaches users how to use the customization features

PRI components

Predisposition

• People generally already know what they want to buy
• Price is a major factor when shopping
• Music taste is too different for everyone to be generalized
• Not everyone listens to music
• Brand association can be factor for using a service or buying a product
• People don’t look at ads anymore

Research

• Most people would want a customizable home page
• People just use the search bar instead of the store
• Not interested by the contents/ads
• most find it confusing at first, but gets used to it

Insights

• Having more content that are relevant to the user may be able to boost sales
• Different countries focuses on different categories of  products (music in USA, apps in China)
• People are more willing to spend the effort to search/download free products
• Not everyone is willing to change, some really likes the current design because everything is in one place

Concepts

• Recommendation based on the users’ library
• give the users the choice to change the product category for the home page (music/apps/movies/TV)
• the ability to minimize/close contents
• Give more control over the genre
• Give free downloads reward based on purchases

PRI blog

Predispositions:

• Users would like to find the content effectively.
• Users would like to have a simple, yet functional interface.

Research:

• Users need recommendations and a customizable homepage;
• Users don’t like poor search function;

Insights:

• Users don’t easily find what they are looking for on the present iTunes Store homepage.
• Users want many customization options.

Concepts:

• Fully customizable homepage (fonts, background, layout, content, customization for elements)
• Smart recommendations engine, which recommends based on previous purchases
• Secondary recommendations engine, which recommends based on predefined genres
• More functional search engine

PRI Components

Predispositions

1. Users like it when they find what the are looking for quickly.

2. Users don’t like to be confused/overwhelmed when using a system.

Research

1. Users tend to go straight to the search bar, ignoring the homepage.

2. Users would like recommendations on music.

Insights

1. Users don’t see content that they are interested in on the homepage.

2. Users would like to customize the homepage so that they would utilize the homepage more.

 

Concepts

1. Allowing the user to somewhat pick and choose what kind of content will be displayed on the homepage.

2. Displaying content based on previous iTunes Store purchases and music in the users’ iTunes Library.

P R I components

Predispositions
1.  Users of the iTunes music store would like to buy products faster. 
2.  Users of the iTunes music store would like the home page to be less cluttered.

Research
1.  From our interviews, many people said that the page is cluttered and distracting.
2.  From our interviews, many people said that they don’t even use the home page, they just go straight to the search bar. 

Insights
1.  People are distracted by flashy ads and many columns to choose from to look at products that they might not even want. 
2.  People would like to be able to customize or make the homepage simpler.

 

Concepts
1.  Being able to organize the page by selecting the type of product that you would want to look at.  
2.  Being able to collapse the boxes that way there would be less distractions for the user.
3.  Making the homepage customizable, making it have a check box option of what genres and what products you would like to have on your homepage.  The first box would be recommendations that you would like based on your music library and the second box being top sellers.  Maybe have a few other boxes on the page as well.

Blog

Predisposition:  Users want their content available to them fast

Research:  Interviews, resulted in users not satisfied with finding their content quickly/lack use of iTunes Store homepage

Insights:  People were overwhelmed with the homepage for the iTunes Store.  They didn’t often buy or even click on any content from the homepage.  Users wanted to just go straight to the content they wanted to buy, which could either be from a specific genre of music, movies, tv shows, or other content that is available.

Concepts:  Making this homepage customizable is some way in which the user can find their specific content much faster.  Also, adding a search bar to the homepage could help the user find what they want in a quick manner if they know specifically what they want.

meeting

are we planning to meet any time? i don’t have a job, and only four classes, so i’m pretty much free anytime.

Sketch Design

Click for larger image

My idea is focused around removing the clutter. The page would look a lot less of a mess if the ad blocks between media categories were removed. Another thing I noticed were the gray bars at the top and bottom of the screen that were mostly blank. By moving the two top boxes with links to the bars, a lot more room would be freed. As for customization, I think it’s important for users to see something familiar so they can recognize its function without learning it. Therefore, I want to put a red X button at the corner of each content box. A user can click the X and it will close that particular box from the page, just like a user does in Windows or Mac OS. Lastly, one thing I wasn’t able to illustrate was a menu that would allow people to check off what types of content they’d like to see (this way they can get certain boxes back after they close them using the X if they want to at some point in the future). In addition, I think there should be color schemes in place. Instead of the typical Itunes white/metal gray color scheme, why not orange, green, pink, etc? IPods come in all different colors so why not let ITunes let you choose the interface color?