User Research

For our research, we made a survey, but also decided to interview bar managers and DJs.

BARS
For bar interviews, we talked to representatives from Ugly Tuna and Midway. Both bars have the same demographic (age 21-25, college students) and said they would register their bar for this website. Ugly Tuna would want extra marketing out of it and Midway would like more business (increased attendance and sales).

Ugly Tuna thinks this would benefit their bar because their audience would get to know how cheap their specials are. Midway, however, thinks they would benefit through getting more business and marketing.
The only hesitation was if other bars have better deals on certain days.

Midway only has live music 3 nights a week, while Ugly Tuna has live music every night of the week.

Ugly Tuna would be willing to pay for this service, but Midway would not.

DJ'S
We interviewed DJ B-rob who said he would be interested in creating a profile on the site. His genre is open format. DJ B-rob said he would upload samples of his music and believes his followers would tune in. He typically performs at Ugly Tuna, Cantina and Sugarbar.

SURVEY
The survey was sent out over social media and gathered 102 responses of which 80 were fully completed. Females accounted for 63 percent of the responses and 37 percent were males. Of the responses 91 percent were between the ages of 18-22. 

Forty percent of the responses were by fourth year undergraduates, and other levels of undergraduates (1-3,5) made up for 49 percent. The remaining 11 percent were in graduate school, young professionals or other.

We asked questions to gauge current behaviors to see if they'd be a fit for our website. The first question asked which websites and applications participants used most for music (allowed to select more than one):

Answer		%
iTunes		75%
Pandora		76%
Spotify		44%
SoundCloud		23%
YouTube		75%
Radio websites or iHeart Radio app		13%
Google Play		3%
Television or Xbox channels		3%
Other		16%

We were excited to see that three out of four of the most popular answers were online streaming websites (Pandora, Spotify and YouTube) meaning our website aligns with existing habits.

Next, we asked which genres they like to listen to (allowed to select more than one):

Pop/Today's Hits		78%
Country		57%
Rap		42%
Hip Hop/R&B		52%
Electronica/Techno/Dubstep		37%
Alternative		59%
Rock		46%
Heavy Metal		8%
Reggae		11%

The genres that appeal most to our website idea are Pop/Today's Hits (78%) and Electonica (37%). It is great that one of those was the most selected answer and that the interest in other relevant genres should align with some music offered on our website. 

To continue gauging behaviors that coincide with our websites purpose, we asked what they use to play music when the host friends at their place. The top two most likely used methods were (1) music previously downloaded to phones or iPods and (2) Pandora or Spotify. Again, these behaviors align with our website's offering. Participants were mostly neutral or unlikely to use radio and other sites that stream music, and most unlikely to not play music at all. We are happy that online streaming websites were the second most popular source for playing music as that is similar to what our website will be.

 Beyond music, we wanted to learn how often they go to bars: 

Answer		%
Never		8%
Less than Once a Month		12%
Once a Month		11%
2-3 Times a Month		20%
Once a Week		21%
2-3 Times a Week		22%
Daily		4%

And how often they go to bars more than a mile away from Ohio State's campus.

Answer		%
Never		17%
Less than Once a Month		37%
Once a Month		21%
2-3 Times a Month		13%
Once a Week		0%
2-3 Times a Week		7%
Daily		4%

These results show that the majority of our participants are bar-goers, which we are targeting. It also shows that there is a need for our website to improve attendance at bars away from campus.

Based off the average of the rankings of our participants, we found that the most common factor is where people’s friends are or where they want to go followed by having favorite bars that they continually go to. Cover charges, specials, transportation and proximity all scored very similarly. The least important factors were age restrictions and entertainment happening that night.

Our main concern is that entertainment is one of the least important factors, although it is somewhat close to neutral. We hope that those participants that weigh it as an important factor would find much use in our website to make decisions. We also see the opportunity to make this a bigger factor.

This question still holds a lot of importance, because it lets us know what information is important for us to list about each bar and how to incorporate that to make our site useful to more people.

 Next, we asked their preferences for when attending bars.

Answer		%
DJ		45%
Live performer		32%
Radio/playlist		22%
None		1%

We were very excited to see that almost half of our participants prefer DJs. This reinforces the idea that people will seek out DJ's music online or go to bars/clubs based of DJs and entertainment.

Only 27 percent of the participants actively follow a DJ or performer (go to shows, social media, etc.). This 27 percent is our main target audience for our website. The other 73 percent we hope will follow a DJ once they try our site.

The next portion of our survey tried to gauge the interest in our website idea:

• 65 percent said they would somewhat likely, likely or very likely "LIKE a website that allows me to stream live music from bars and clubs on any given night."
• 58 percent said they would somewhat likely, likely or very likely "USE a website that allows me to stream live music from bars and clubs on any given night."
• 37 percent said they would somewhat likely, likely or very likely "tune in to a specific DJ or bar from home."

Lastly, we left an area for input at the end in which one issue to address was brought to our attention. They mentioned that remote listeners may try to record the music and post it online.