Fan | A K-pop App for Fans

09.2016 - 12.2016 | Member: Zhaoying Li, Jingyang Qin

Overview

Problem Space

For fans liking K-pop in China, they always need to spend a long time collecting news of their idols on foreign platforms. This high-cost, low-yield inputs, only allows fans to gather fragmented information. The absence of a domestic K-pop community/application makes the fans feel remoted from their idols and K-pop culture.

Solution

We presented FAN·饭, a mobile app that provides immediate news about K-pop culture and real-time interactive activities among fans to build a community for China’s K-pop fans. The users can watch MVs, upload videos and posters, get first-hand news, and build inner community with others based on their interests.

My Contribution

User Research: Identified users’ pain points by surveys and interviews, conducted a competitive analysis.

Product Design: Came up with the product features to address the issue, designed the information architecture.

UX Design: Determined the general visual style. Designed the user interface and interaction flow of K-pop idols and information support.

User Testing: Gathered feedback of version improvement.

Approach

Research & Synthesis

We published an online survey to gather info about what users’(fans) need of a K-Pop app and the difficulties they face currently. We also did an in-depth interview with 5 people to supplement the data we gathered from the surveys and dig more detailed requirements of users.

Here are the insights we found from our research:

Not only for fans, the demand for news or info about K-pop stars or culture is also attractive to the general public. Weibo, WeChat are where Chinese usually gathered daily info, but info on these platforms is fragmented.
Users not only interested in info about their idols, but also have a demand of obtaining general entertainment info.
For fans, keeping up with news of idols and having all idols productions are necessities for an app. They also want to meet fans with the same interests.
Users can get general info even if they don’t log in. Users are free to join/add themselves to topics/community.
Classify the info for users. E.g.: For fans, the images of the idols can be separated into airport images, activities images, album posters, etc.

Persona

Competitive Analysis & Similar Apps

Currently, fans app can be divided into 2 categories:

1. Personal app authorized by the star, such as "Pocket";

2. Aggregate apps, like V-live.

VLive

A Korean’s live broadcast app, it builds bridges for stars and fans, where they can interact during live.

Shortcoming: The main language of the app is Korean. sIngle function.

Pocket Fan

A vertical product for a single star.

Shortcoming: The app only has one idol.

Idol

A representative of the aggregate fan app, users can choose the stars they want to fellow. There are both Korean hot stars and Chinese stars on this app. The app is the choice of the majority of k-pop fans.

Shortcoming: 1.Too many ads which influence users’ experience. 2. The right of speak of each community is not equal.

Alibaba Planet

A product of Alibaba, focusing on singers around the world, has a certain user base.

Shortcoming: Too many functions, cause confusion for users.

Ideation & Design

Based on the research, we defined our design goals as below:

Accessible. The app should be accessible for all users, even if they do not login.
Freedom & Sociability. Users can choose the community they want, no ranking advantage during socializing.
Bidirectional. The app should be valuable for both fans and people who just interested in entertainment info.
UGC + Platforms.

Then, we structured the features in our information architecture:

Wireframes & Logo design

Home page

Users do not need to log-in. The home page provides general info of K-pop.

Register & Log in

When users want to fellow a specific idol, they need to register.

Fellowed idol page & Personal page

Every idol the user fellowed will have a personal page, where fans get together and share info. On the top-right side of this interface, users can change to other idols' page they fellowed.