

Show HN: The Artist Hunt – An intuitive way to discover music - oscarn
http://www.theartisthunt.com

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coderzach
Some feedback, mostly on the UX:

So I dismissed the instructions without reading them thoroughly. Everything
was super confusing and it was unclear what up or down did, other than start
playing different music.

It seems weird that up chooses a new artist and down chooses the next song. I
heard a song I like, accidentally pressed down, and then up went, in an
attempt to get back, but instead was sent to another artist. Super confusing.

The back button randomly changes artists. This is also super confusing.
Couldn't you have a button for that?

When I click on one of the albums, the transition doesn't make it clear that
it's now playing what you clicked on, and the previous list is now GONE. I
assumed clicking would "select" the album. Also, once I've clicked an album,
there's no way to get back.

And finally, my general feeling about the interface is that it's too focused
on "power users", not being quick and easy to understand. I doubt this is
something that needs really easy hotkeys, and if it does, it should be
complimented with buttons that do the same things.

Don't let this feedback discourage you. I think you're solving a real problem,
it's just hard to get past the UX. My advice would to to do some user testing.
When you're building a super experimental UI, that isn't like anything else in
existence, you probably want to verify that it doesn't completely confuse
people.

tl;dr Do some user testing and you'll see most of these problems for yourself.

~~~
oscarn
Super interesting feedback, huge thanks.

Some of the things you mention are actually relics from when this was a game,
that limited how you can browse. (The initial idea was a game where you
browsed as fast (ie few clicks) as possible from one artist to the other, but
the feedback we got indicated that the discovery part was much more
interesting)

But then again, we definitely get lost in our own (power user) perspective. We
were dead set on using arrow keys as main browsing technique to start with, to
get that mechanical and low friction feel. Not great for most users though,
probably.

~~~
flanbiscuit
I was also confused.

I think the fact that you don't ask the user to put in an artist from the very
beginning is what contributed to my confusion. I didn't know how to switch to
a different genre/era of music so I thought I had to navigate there somehow.
It took me a little while to finally see the "enter an artist" text. Once I
put in an artist (I used Nirvana) it started to make sense to me a bit.

edit: played around with it some more and now that I get the hang of it and
know that I can easily change my starting artist, it's really cool!

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minimaxir
It's difficult to call a website intuitive when you have to provide a
_tutorial_ on launch.

~~~
oscarn
You are right, intuitive is not the right word. Mechanical and low friction
(after a while) though.

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normloman
1\. I can't hear sound in Firefox. I am stuck running an older version at work
(25) if that makes a difference. Maybe you don't want to support older
browsers, so forgive me I'm nitpicking.

2\. So I gather the arrow keys help you find related artists. What do I do if
I don't like an artist?

3\. It says I can jump to an artist by searching in the text field. Where the
hell is that?

4\. The back button thing, previously mentioned.

It's good to keep directions simple, but you've gone to far. From reading the
directions, I can't figure out what this does, why it's useful, or even how to
use it (where is this text field?)

~~~
zeeed
great site. took some time to look through the tutorial and love the
navigation. the ux is completely OK for discovery and the value added is
great.

Same problem for me in firefox (latest version): no text field, means I'm
stuck with a certain style on initial launch.

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Wilduck
To disagree with many of the other comments here, I found the interface pretty
great. My only issue was that I couldn't figure out how to get a seed artist
in a genre I liked. Once I realized the Artist name at the top was also a
search bar, I was flying.

One feature I wish it had, were a way to go back down to the previous set of
artist choices. Other than that, I've been enjoying exploring music with this.

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dangerlibrary
A site focused on UX shouldn't hijack my back button.

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23andwalnut
Beautiful app. I'm not sure music should start playing immediately. I'll press
play when I'm ready...

Where are you getting the data from?

~~~
gothep
One of the creators here. Thank you! We removed the playing song in the
beginning! The data is from the Spotify web api! :)

------
oscarn
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Pushing the latest adjustments to heroku
(yay for Meteor.js support!) as we speak.

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Paul_S
Where do you get the recommendations from? Where is the about page?

~~~
oscarn
I guess an about page is on the todo list for 1.0 :)

We are using the Spotify Web API for everything: music (nicely cut 30s
previews of songs), artist relations, images.

------
danbee
HOLY SHIT WHERE'S THAT MUSIC COMING FROM?!? [hits close button]

~~~
danbee
Yeah sorry, perhaps I was a little bit harsh but I had the volume up on my
speakers! I do however think it's very rude of a web page to start playing
audio when it's opened and I'm glad to see that it's been fixed.

