Redesigning the UX & UI experience for a leading music education provider
Music, maestro
The Institute of Contemporary Musical Performance (ICMP) has been providing high quality learning for music students for over 30 years, focusing on creating tailored and personalised education experiences. In addition to providing real-world learning at its London campus, ICMP provides online content and courses for those wishing to accelerate their musical education remotely. ICMP approached 383 with a mission to overhaul and refresh the experience of their online short courses.
Making overtures
With growing demand for online study, partly driven by Covid-19 and lockdown restrictions, ICMP recognised an opportunity to strengthen and expand their online proposition. They needed to create a distinct experience for a new audience with a different mindset and goals from ICMP’s core audience, seeking shorter, self-guided courses online. The existing landing pages needed updating and refreshing to provide a more intuitive user experience, creating a clear brand identity that would distinguish them from the wider range of products and courses on offer.
Listening in
The project started with an in-depth immersion workshop with the ICMP team. Together, we explored the brief to understand the requirements and expectations, and discuss the competitive landscape and emerging trends around online learning. From here, the first step to improve the user experience was to review the current content, looking at everything from structure to naming conventions. We built a new, optimised content matrix in Google Sheets, mapping all the elements out to ensure prospective students could more easily identify and navigate through the short courses on offer.
All the right notes
The design phase focused on creating intuitive, distinctive user experiences across desktop and mobile. The landing pages were validated with a round of user testing through Usability Hub, to check that the new designs, page structure and naming conventions worked for our target audience. The response was overwhelmingly positive - descriptions such as energetic, trustworthy, bright, bold, engaging, clear and easy to navigate were music to our ears! We also received some useful nuggets of insight which allowed us to make small improvements to the design before delivering the final output.
383 were great at keeping us up to date throughout the project. The designs were exactly what we wanted and overall it was a good experience for the whole team involved. Stress-free project from our end - a welcome change!
Let the music play
The new content matrix and UX designs have allowed ICMP to create a coherent and consistent experience for potential students, with a more considered structure and intuitive navigation. Our assumptions were validated through user testing, so we could be confident that the changes would benefit the target audience. In addition, we’ve built a framework that can grow and expand over time as ICMP continues to develop its offering.
