Fender Play Browse Experience
Project Background
Fender Play is an online learning platform designed to help users learn guitar, bass, and ukulele through structured lessons and personalized guidance. While the platform offers a robust catalog of educational content, users often struggle with navigation, content discovery, and finding materials that align with their skill level and interests. To address these challenges, the Explore Experience initiative was developed to create a more intuitive browsing experience, improve content discoverability, and provide personalized recommendations. This effort also supports Fender Play’s transition to a Contentful Learning Management System (LMS), helping to create a scalable and efficient content delivery system.
GOALS
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Create an explore experience that improves browsing and discovery.
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Deliver personalized content aligned with each user’s journey.
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Streamline pathways and consolidate information for a smoother experience.
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Revamp IA to improve content navigation.
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Facilitate the transition to a Contentful LMS.
CHALLENGES
Users struggle to navigate Fender Play, making it difficult to discover relevant lessons and content. The current structure does not effectively support exploration or personalized recommendations, limiting engagement. The transition to a Contentful LMS requires a complete reorganization of content to improve accessibility and usability. Additionally, balancing an intuitive user experience with the complexity of various learning paths presents a significant challenge.
MY ROLE
As Lead Designer, I was responsible for:
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Researched navigation pain points to shape the explore experience.
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Redesigned IA to improve content discovery.
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Built an intuitive, personalized browsing experience.
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Created shared components for consistency and content integration.
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Conducted user testing on the new IA and experience.
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Collaborated with product and data to develop A/B tests.
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Partnered with engineering and product to integrate Contentful LMS.
The Experience
Explore & Featured Content
We added the Explore tab to enhance the user experience. When users open the Explore view, they will see the Featured tab, which has been carefully curated by the Fender Play content team. This section showcases the newest and related content, seamlessly integrating merchandising elements to create a cohesive and engaging scrolling experience.
Songs, Collections & Skills
Songs, Collections, and Skills used to be their own separate item within navigation. However, data showed that users rarely browsed these sections, and when they did, they struggled to find content. The design approach was to consolidate these pages into the explore experience to address this. This involved redesigning them with modular components to create a cohesive and familiar behavior. The hypothesis was that users would be more inclined to explore within a modular system, and it would also streamline work processes for the larger team by leveraging the design system.
Optimizing User Pain Points
Navigation
The navigation was redesigned to remain permanently visible, making home access easier throughout the experience. It was also streamlined by reducing items, creating a simpler, more user-friendly interface. This improvement helps the Play content and product team guide users more intentionally and effectively.
HOMEPAGE
Exposed search
The team decided to transition to a new search experience. The design strategy involved creating a prominent search feature that remains at the top of the page and conducting an A/B test to determine if its visibility increases user engagement. Additionally, we considered leveraging AI in the future to generate prompts that assist users in finding what they need.
Chords
We introduced the ability to display personalized chords and functionality was added to enable users to play chord sound clips while browsing, significantly enhancing the learning experience in a fluid and user-friendly manner.
