Pro Tools Sketch (mobile & desktop)

The Pro Tools Sketch is Avid's first mobile music creation app, as well as a major new feature in the desktop application. As the name suggests, it enables users to quickly sketch music ideas in a way that is optimized for music creators.

For this project, I was the Co-Product Owner and Designer, responsible for a number of core functionalities from conception to release.

The Problem

Evolving Music Creation Trends

Although Pro Tools was already a very capable music creation tool, it was much better known as a top recording, editing, and mixing application. Its features were primarily geared towards traditional linear recordings of live performances, and assumed that the user had fairly well-formed ideas of their compositions, possessed reasonable musical knowledge and technical chops, as well as access to quality musicians.

This did not fit the needs of modern individual music writers and producers who now comprised a large part of the music making population, and were the primary user demographic we wanted to pursue. These writers/producers often worked alone, but needed to record various instrument types which they were not proficient in. Pro Tools basically lacked creation oriented features that these modern users needed.

Research

Identify Target User

Avid's "official" audio personae were established shortly before the project was given its go-ahead. The target users were:

Music creators in a younger demographic than traditional Pro Tools users
Beat makers

These were in contrast to the audio professional personae to which Pro Tools traditionally catered.

Conduct User Research

A number of sources were used to gather details on workflow needs and pain points.

User forums (official and external)
Feature request hub
Internal music creators
Beta group

The Pro Tools beta group had been traditionally composed of highly experienced professionals in various roles and fields. While these professionals were continued to be consulted, a whole new group of younger less experienced users including students were actively recruited into the beta group for this project.

In addition to external sources, we collected input from the many musicians we have in the organization.

Competitive Analysis

Many other music creation tools on both mobile and desktop were studied to identify universal workflows and conventions which we may want to follow, as well as determine what further innovations we can bring to the table.

Solution

A Non-Linear Music Creation Tool

Differentiators

Unlike

Final Design

Dark Theme (November 2020)

The new dark theme included new UI assets, giving a flatter more modern look.

UI Customization (June 2021)

Many parameters were exposed to users so they can customize their workspace to create a comfortable working environment, optimize their workflows, and to have some fun making funky colored UIs! Customized UI could then be saved as presets so that users can quickly switch between them to suit their workflow as well as transport and share.

High Contrast UI (October 2021)

A special mode for vision diversity was implemented to improve visibility of UI objects which were especially difficult for some users to discern. This mode included exaggerated indicators for disabled state plates, borders between and around many UI objects, and higher contrast in text fields.

Behind the Scenes

Tools for color and asset management

Insights and Findings

Clip States

One of the challenges was to design the visualization for each of the many states of clips on the timeline. Although the clip states went through several iterations during development, user and beta feedback after the initial release pointed out some difficulties in differentiating between a few of these states.

The specific states were identified, the problem analyzed, and a much better design was defined and implemented in a follow up release.

Personal Taste

While there may be general trends in popularity, the ideal look of a UI is highly dependent on personal taste. This hypothesis (fear) was proven in many forum posts (thread from Avid Pro Audio Community) where some users were very critical of the new dark theme and its design choices.

We gathered and parsed through feedback after the initial release, and separated actual usability issues from aesthetic preferences. While some issues such as clip states needed to be addressed on our end, most had no real single solution because they were either based on personal preference, working environment, or workflow goals.

It was evident that the only viable solution was to give users control over key UI elements. Luckily the system we implemented was designed from the ground up to be flexible, and it was technically simple to expose these parameters. However it was quite another challenge defining what parameters to include and exclude.

Summary

A New Lease on Life

Analytics data shows the popularity of dark theme, with roughly 2/3 of Pro Tools users opting for it. Of course it was never our intention to completely replace the light theme; instead we wanted to provide users with options (thread from Facebook Pro Tools user group).

Helping to Establish a Subscription Appropriate Cadence

After the initial release of dark theme, key bugs were quickly addressed and major upgrades released in quick succession. This (hopefully) helped change the ingrained user perception that Avid never follows up with improvements once a feature is released, and proved that we were serious and able to continuously deliver goodies in a way that users rightly expected from a subscription.

Inclusive Design

As a product with a wide range of users, it's important to review and improve on the user experience for diverse abilities. In this case the enhancements were explicitly designed with vision diversity in mind, including color blindness and low vision, and in doing so the end result also benefited those without disabilities.

Shout Outs!

I worked very closely with our esteemed visual designer Christoph Diermann (you are the man!!) in choosing the right color combinations, determining and achieving the desired look, and learning in general about visual design. I owe a great deal to him in the successful completion of this project and learned a whole lot about how to use color to clearly communicate information. Of course color alone cannot be relied on to communicate different states in consideration for color blindness, but we worked through that challenge too!

The starting spark and technical basis for all these improvements were dreamed up and implemented by one very talented engineer Ben Gibbons (you are awesome!!). What had seemed like an impossible mission was eventually realized in just one year from the original hackathon project thanks to his brilliant ideas, curiosity, drive, and tenacity.

Thank you for reading!

"Customizable UI allows users to more comfortably and clearly manage sessions in dark studios that require focus on video and musical performance"

- Joe Trapanese

Multi award winning composer and producer (Tron: Legacy, The Witcher, Disney Animation)