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Masters Capstone Project - EntryNote

​There are approximately 1,300+ student musicians at Purdue University's band/orchestra department, and all need to go through an audition process to be placed into one of the 30 ensembles the university offers. With these auditions come stress, performance anxiety, frustration, sadness, and many more emotions. I have personally gone through this process many times since my undergraduate degree started in 2020, so I know firsthand how stressful this process is. Many students wish to put forward their best effort to be placed into an ensemble that fits their playing ability.

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Building on these insights, my goal was to develop a mobile app prototype for student musicians to use during their two-week audition practice period, enabling them to monitor their rehearsal progress and reduce their audition-related stress and anxiety.

T​imeline​

January to May 2026

Platform

Figma

Role

UX Researcher & Designer 

Role

UX Designer

Precedence Study

The goal of this precedence study was to understand previous works (if any) to consider what options there are for people wanting help with their music performance. I found many music-based mobile apps, many of which had capabilities like:  

  • Upload sheet music & make edits, create your own music from scratch, listen to the end product

I also found one program that gives in-person help with auditions, among other musician resources. Additionally, there are generic wellness and fitness trackers, but no trackers catered toward musicians that I could find.

Project Focus

Once I mapped out my experience, I thought, “Surely other students feel the same or similar to how I do…”. I realized I could focus on the two weeks where students have access to audition material and want to keep themselves organized and on track (rather than focus on  the entire process… it seemed like out of my scope to consider more). The graph was mostly just to help me visualize the process. 

Primary Research - Questionnaire

I created a questionnaire on Google Forms to send to my fellow band students to fill out, and I received 16 responses. I wanted to learn about their audition rehearsal habits, how stressed they are during it, and their performance anxiety. The images above showcase a few main insights.

Journey Mapping

After gaining insights from the primary research, I created 3 user personas to see their separate journeys. User A, a strong musician, User B, an average musician, and User C, a less experienced musician. My main focus was on Users B and C, those less experienced who might not have a set procedure for their audition rehearsals.

Low-Fidelity Sketch 

The next step was low-fidelity sketches using pencil and paper / Figma. I wanted to emphasize the landscape mode for the music screen for better visibility on the sheet music

Mid-Fidelity Prototype 1

This prototype was mainly so that I could visualize my low-fidelity sketches better. During this stage, I had a specific idea on how to notate the sheets of music: creating a "post" so to speak for each of the highlights a user makes. 

Mid-Fidelity Prototype 2

The next prototype I created was for my first round of usability testing. I tested with one musician and one non-musician to gain insights as to how they perceived the  app to be used, and their comments for how to make the experience better.

Highlights from the first user: 

  • A percentage number is hard to evaluate 

  • Show days remaining with the calendar; two functions merged into one 

  • Filter by tags (tags would be each piece) 

  • Goals; Archived so you can see all the things you did

Highlights from the second user:​

  • Chart / graph form for view data (4 modules at top) 

  • First time app opens after audition completion, “are you done” (bottom drawer) 

  • Graphs! Show data rather than words

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Wizard of Oz Testing

I realized the primary goal is to reduce friction by making it easy for someone to know where their problems are in a piece of music. This meant reworking the notation system altogether; a user would have to stop their rehearsal, pick out the musical note, measure, or marking that gave them trouble, think of something to write, think about what tag to attach to the note, then “post” it. This itself was a lot of mental work, especially with the users I tested with. 

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They then highlighted the music piece based on 4 factors: 

  • Tempo (speed of music played)

  • Notes (playing the correct pitch)

  • Style (written feel of the music) 

  • Rhythm (ordered pattern of sound + silence over time)

High-Fidelity Final Prototype 

Here is the final prototype presented. If I were to continue to work on this project past this class, there would definitely be other features I would consider adding that I did not have the time to test or implement into the design. One of the main elements is more flexibility / customization of the highlighting system. I would have to complete more research on what might be the most optimized way to make that work. 

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