ChordConnect: Bringing People Together Through Music
Sohrab Osmany, Michael Sinn, Karla Quiroz-Medrano, Radu Richardson, and Kyle Eng
Designed by Freepik
Synopsis
Music is meant to be shared with others. Professional musicians naturally work together through established networks, rehearsal spaces, and shows. But people who play music just for fun often find themselves playing alone. Our study found that hobby musicians face many problems when playing with others: they struggle with busy schedules, mismatched skill levels, finding the right musical partners, and a shortage of accessible practice spaces. As a result, many talented players miss out on the happiness and creativity that comes from playing music with others, an issue more pronounced in areas lacking musicians. To solve this problem, we created ChordConnect, a mobile app that works to quickly connect players with others. Users swipe to find other musicians who match their style, get placed in a group chat, and from there can view how everyone’s schedules match up–all in one stress-free, centralized interface.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
We wanted to learn about the specific challenges hobby musicians face. To do this, we asked 20 people to fill out a survey and conducted detailed interviews with four musicians, each playing a different instrument. Our primary focus was on hobbyists at the University of Washington and in greater Seattle. We intentionally selected participants who play for fun, without professional or semi-professional music connections, to better understand the unique barriers that casual players encounter. Surveys helped reveal common patterns and problems that helped form our questions for the interviews. The interviews gave us deeper insights into the emotional and logistical steps involved for musicians trying to organize group playing sessions. Our primary stakeholders are these hobbyist musicians, with some consideration given towards musicians who fill in for ad-hoc sessions or professionals.
Design Research Results and Themes
Our survey of 20 hobbyist musicians and follow-up interviews with four participants revealed three leading barriers. Discovery was one of the leading ones. 50% of respondents in our survey reported struggling to find other people who share their genre interests and skill levels. One interviewee mentioned that their friends were typically busy — even when they weren’t, they leaned towards a more structured setting instead of the casual, “countryside” feeling the interviewee was looking for. They also mentioned they were “not looking to play with complete beginners”. Even if finding people was not an issue, scheduling emerged as the biggest challenge hobbyists faced. 75% of respondents flagged “Coordinating free times” as their biggest blocker. As an interviewee put it, there is “no time to practice outside of rehearsal, which makes rehearsal into practice time”. These two themes alone consume the majority of hobbyists’ time and enthusiasm before they even begin.
Beyond matching and timing, venue and logistical constraints were a big issue. 65% of survey respondents struggle to secure affordable, accessible practice spaces. One interviewee remarked that people don’t go out and play, and most jazz clubs require players to be over the age of 21, which is restrictive. They reported that “Booking school of music rooms can be difficult” and “nothing is established in Seattle to rent out and play in”. Not only that, but this interviewee plays the bass, which is a very difficult instrument to transport to various venues. Another interviewee shared similar issues, as their primary instrument is a piano. Together, these themes point directly to two critical, repeatable workflows: Discovering compatible collaborators and streamlining the setup of recurring jam coordination. Our design must address these to make it truly easy for casual musicians to have more opportunities to create and be musically fulfilled.
Our Design
Based on the themes that emerged during design research, we settled on two key tasks our design should make easier to do — connecting with compatible musicians and scheduling sessions with others. Additionally, we decided that a mobile app would be the best way for users to carry out these tasks since phones are ubiquitous and easily accessible. To visualize our key tasks, we created storyboards that walk the viewer through the motivation and potential steps involved. For example, below is a storyboard conveying what it may look like to find other musicians through our design.
From our storyboards, we started to formulate a design that integrated our two key tasks. In the end, we came up with ChordConnect, a mobile app designed specifically for hobby musicians to connect and play music together. The app takes inspiration from dating platforms, offering a simple and intuitive interface where musicians can find others with compatible interests, chat, and coordinate sessions seamlessly all in one place.
The core functionality of ChordConnect revolves around profile matching. Users create profiles that specify the instruments they play, their skill level, preferred genres, and availability. So, when a user presses “Group Me!”, they enter a matching phase where the app will present some set number of these profiles that users can swipe through to find potential musical partners. At the end of this matching phase, the goal is that the user will be placed into a group of compatible musicians. From there, users can chat with others in the group and view a composite schedule showing availability based on the schedules from each person’s profile. Through this process of matching and grouping, users can carry out the two key tasks identified earlier through a single, unified approach.
