Rate Your Music Home Page Redesign
Oct. 9, 2024
RYM is one of the leading music and film encyclopedias on the internet. Users can also categorize and review albums using a five-star rating system.
RYM's home page as of Oct. 2024
Pain points:
Lack of Visual Hierarchy
Nothing particularly stands out to the user when deciding where or what to navigate to. Core features like discovering new music, making lists, and creating reviews are buried within the interface. The sections appear to all fight for attention without giving the user adequate breathing room, making it feel very cluttered.
Overwhelming Content Density
The home page bombards users with dense chunks of text, such as long reviews and detailed descriptors of albums, that take up almost a quarter of the main screen and most of the eyeline space.
Legibility and Font Issues
Along with information-heavy chunks, the font size and spacing are relatively small and tightly packed, making it difficult for a user to digest the long sections of text. For users with vision difficulties, this page is tough to use.
Draft Prototype:
User-Centered Redesign (Draft):
Restructuring of Visual Hierarchy
I removed the description of RYM's service since the average user can gauge it from its name and visual features; it is much better suited in an "About Us" section. I made the headings larger and better placed, and changed "Features" to "Sonemic Features" for brevity. I compacted "Sonemic Features" and "New Releases" so the focus remains on the Featured Reviews and the user has more room to breathe.
Redesigned Album Review Cards
I also compacted the "Featured Reviews" album cards, excluding noisy information like superfluous descriptors and various music platform hyperlinks for each album. I also cut off the review at a certain length and added a "Read More" button where the full review can be seen. The focus of the section should be exposing the user to a range of reviews and albums rather than one or two long reviews. With this redesign, they are more likely to see an album they want to explore or are already familiar with.
Font Adjustments for Readability
I enlarged fonts in areas such as the navigation bar, the headings, the reviews, the releases and more.
Design Consistency
I standardized same capitalization and text styles for all the titles, headings, and bodies of text.
Feedback:
Differentiating Sections within Album Cards
"Use more text size difference between the sections in the album cards since right now, it blends together and that interrupts the visual hierarchy."
Final Prototype:
User-Centered Redesign (Final):
Adjusting Fonts within Album Cards
I adjusted the font spacing within the album cards. This not only distinguishes the sections within the card more, but also allows for more content to show on the screen without compromising on readability or making it feel more cluttered.
