Bandcamp Usability Evaluation

Problem

These full-time students maintain tight schedules, with some also employed part-time. As such, it is difficult to maintain household management and work-life balance, on top of overcoming language and cultural barriers daily.

Goal

As such, the application strives to provide a user-centric solution that addresses the unique challenges and requirements of this diverse group, ultimately improving their physical & mental wellbeing by facilitating safety, convenience, and social harmony.

Tools

  • Figma
  • Canva
  • Miro

Team

4 UX design students

My role

User research specialist

Timeline

12 weeks

Objectives

The objectives of this evaluation of Bandcamp are to assess and improve the overall usability of the website; we aim to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the site's search functionality, content exploration, and purchase process. The study will assess the usability of filtering options and interacting with album and song listings, and further with the efficiency of the purchasing process, including adding items to the cart and managing the 'pay-what-you-want' pricing model. Our goal is to provide actionable insights that will enhance usability by using standard evaluation metrics to identify key issues and understand their impact on user satisfaction and site performance.

Users and Recruitment

Since music listening is a universal activity, Bandcamp appeals to a wide range of users. The primary target user is one who seeks to discover new and lesser-known artists, as Bandcamp’s model uniquelysupports independent musicians. Additionally, Bandcamp attracts users who prefer physical formatslike CDs, vinyl, or cassettes and those interested in purchasing artist merchandise.Participants will be chosen using a screener questionnaire designed to verify key characteristics such asage and interest in independent music. This ensures that we recruit a diverse yet targeted group of users fitting our evaluation needs. We aim to recruit 5 participants to ensure the evaluation proceeds smoothly. Participants will be young adults, who actively engage with music streaming services or physical media and have a strong interest in independent artists. Those who exclusively listen to mainstream music will be excluded. All selected participants will provide informed consent, ensuring they understand the purpose of the evaluation and that their data will be anonymised and used solely for research purposes.

Methods

Heuristic Evaluation
Cognitive Walkthrough
Usability Evaluation

Findings & Recommendations

First click test 1

F1: Website navigation and logic is difficult to understand

We identified through our expert reviews that the website’s logic and structure is difficult to navigate, harming efficiency and memorability.Task 5 in particular, which involved navigating through various parts of the site to find articles, saw the lowest average user satisfaction rating of 2.75/5.
The First Click Test 1 reinforced this navigational difficulty: only 3 of 13 participants successfully identified the correct link to the Bandcamp Daily (articles) page (fig.3), displaying a clear Gulf of Execution issue.

R1: Consistent navigation systems between pages
This would likely entail creating a new, consistent design language and using methods like tree diagrams and flowcharts to distil the site’s navigation down to a simple, understandable system thereby improving site efficiency, learnability and memorability.

R2: Providing links to site functions where users may expect them
Many different users categorise different site functions under different categories, as revealed by the Card Sort. We suggest that Bandcamp includes links to site functions where users expect to find them

R3: Keep menu bar consistent across site

F2: Information is not labelled or categorised well/at all

A significant issue we found throughout our expert reviews, live testing and online tests was an insufficient labelling of information across the website, leading to confusion around what participants were viewing.

R1: Clearly list available products

Many users missed or struggled to find products on album pages; therefore, we suggest available products (i.e., CDs, Vinyls, etc.) be clearly, discretely listed with meaningful icons, prices, descriptions and images that afford interacting with rather than indiscernible textual links with unclear click zones.

R2: Implement tags for Bandcamp Daily

Since users struggled to find/understand the contents of articles, a tagging system should be implemented allowing users to filter articles by tags.

R3: Clarify functional categories for the discovery page

The Discovery page caused overwhelm for LP4 and generally contains a lot of information. We suggest the amount of text be reduced/hidden.

F3: Information hierarchy on webpages is unclear and ineffective

An eye-catching-yet-unnecessary feature on the homepage was the ‘Selling Right Now’ section. 3 out of 4 live participants were distracted by its fast carousel movement; LP2 commented,

“This is too fast. I can’t look. I can’t read it,”
R1: Reduce and rearrange information on the homepage

The homepage should be redesigned to establish a clearer hierarchy of elements, making important features larger/bolder than secondary content, allowing users to scan for important information. Generally reducing the number of elements and establishing consistency through a design language would significantly improve the overall user experience.

R2: Reduce the speed of the ‘Selling Right Now’ updates

The ‘Selling Right Now’ caused significant distraction/overwhelm for participants due to its speed; it should be changed to update less frequently to avoid rapid movement on the homepage.

R3: Reorganise the menu bar

We recommend the menu bar be simplified by condensing the links to ‘Discover,’ ‘Radio,’ ‘Bandcamp Daily,’ ‘Feed,’ ‘Cart’ and ‘Profile,’ reducing it to one row, therefore making it more easily navigable for users

F4: Search functionality is inadequate and difficult to use

Linking to F3, the site’s 3 separate search bar systems were a concern identified in the expert reviews exhibiting varying functionality: there is a site-wide search bar in the menu bar, a filters-specific searchbar on the Discovery page (and the homepage’s Discovery section), and a Bandcamp Daily-specific searchbar. Live participants were visibly frustrated by the lack of clarity around the searchbars due to their limited, varying searching scopes and inconsistent layouts, with LP1 commenting that

the searchbar was “doing unexpected things.”
R1: Consolidate all searchbars into one

Consolidating the multiple searchbars into a single, unified search system would significantly enhance usability by streamlining the search process and providing comprehensive search capabilities across the entire website.

R2: Add advanced filtering options for the searchbar
F5: Buttons and controls are difficult to identify and use
R1: Fix what clicking on album art does

We suggest that clicking on album art should navigate to the album’s page as the user would expect and a discrete ‘play’ button should be added to maintain the listening functionality.

R2: Improve the song’s progress bar

The song’s progress bar should align with users' mental models by allowing them to click at a point to play the track from that timestamp. Requiring users to drag the cursor is unintuitive and frustrating.

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GA