Usability testing: AOL Music player

ROLE: UX Designer, AOL

CHALLENGE: Determine the usability of the bottom bar music player vs. a pop-up music player on the AOL Music site.

PROCESS: An example of ‘guerilla’ user testing, I ran a usability test with eight internal AOL employees to assess the usability of the two different music player experiences. Users were asked to play music from several different sub-sites within AOL Music that featured the two different player experiences and give feedback on usability, functionality and desired improvements.

DELIVERABLE: Presentation to design department with findings, issues and recommended changes and fixes.

OUTCOME: Changes were made to the bottom-bar player that included recommendations from the usability tests including featuring more song information, making the play and pause buttons more visible and intuitive and allowing the bottom bar player to pop-out to allow music to continue playing as the user navigated through the site.