User research for strategic UX direction

User research

Overview

Shaale, an innovative music-tech company, developed a platform for South Indian music learning. Despite strong organic traffic (2,000-3,000 weekly visitors), conversions remained low.

Through UX audit, moderated testing, and observational research, I identified two key issues:

Unclear value proposition
Poor navigation.

I'm now working with team Shaale to better communicate value through content design and improve first-time user journeys across Shaale's entire product portfolio.

Turning a time-intensive and manual process, into a delightful digital experience

Timeframe

8 weeks

Roles

User researcher;

UX + UI design

Responsibilities

Research planning; sourcing participants; communicating results and findings with client

The growth potential of Shaale was stunted as its flagship platform faced a plateau, leaving the team puzzled about the cause.

Shaale’s founder sought to unlock the platform’s potential, recognising its power to transform how traditional music is taught and explored. However, despite its strengths, user engagement remained low.

For me the key objectives were to: 

Understand why users weren’t engaging.
Assess UX opportunities and risks, focusing on usability and content design.
Drive growth by aligning the platform with user needs and expectations.

Resource constraints demanded a swift, efficient approach, leveraging the founder’s knowledge to maximise impact

Finding the blockers to growth

"How can we get people hooked?" - Skanda; Founder, Shaale

To kick off, I conducted an in-depth interview with the founder, Skanda Ananda Murthy, to rapidly build my understanding of: 

The business context, aspirations, goals, and challenges.
The competitive landscape and user profiles.
The platform’s strengths, highlighted during Skanda’s product tour.

This immersion revealed that Shaale had no direct competitors.

Assessing the platform's usability

Next, I performed a UX audit, benchmarking Shaale against best practices in usability and content design. Key observations included: 

Intuitiveness Gap: The platform felt intuitive to the development team but not to users.
Content Clarity: Abundant content lacked a clear purpose for students, the largest user group.
Guidance Deficit: No onboarding or in-product support left first-time users unsupported.

Hypothesis: The lack of clarity and purpose within the product was a barrier to user acquisition.

Testing the hypothesis

To test this hypothesis, I designed moderated usability tests with six participants reflecting Shaale’s target audience: students learning Carnatic music and curious beginners. The process involved: 

Observing users as they attempted core tasks and explored the platform naturally.
Asking targeted questions during significant interactions (e.g., confusion or hesitation) rather than using a “think aloud” method.
Analysing feedback via affinity sorting on Miro, with AI (ChatGPT) acting as a collaborative tool to identify patterns.

Note: sessions averaged 35 minutes, providing rich qualitative data efficiently.

Synthesising audit and user research findings

Key themes and insights

Having completed the research phase, I moved towards analysis. The following themes emerged:

Clarity and Purpose: Users struggled to understand Shaale’s value.
Competitor Comparisons: Remarks like, “Why should I use this instead of Spotify or YouTube?” highlighted a perception gap.
Content Discovery, UI, and Music Player Usability: Additional areas for refinement emerged.

The research confirmed the hypothesis:

Users found the platform “fun” and “cool” but couldn’t see its value for their musical journeys.
The lack of clarity and purpose was a significant barrier to acquisition, with participants unaware Shaale was a learning platform.

This insight was critical. The students, primary revenue generators via subscriptions, needed a compelling reason to sign up.

I now had a validated hypothesis: The lack of clarity and purpose within the product was a barrier to user acquisition

Identifying the low effort/high-impact interventions

After presenting the findings to Shaale’s team, we identified three work streams: 

Turn Visitors into Users: Address the clarity gap to convert interest into action.
Turn Free Users into Paid Subscribers: Enhance onboarding and subscription incentives.
Improve Engagement: Refine content discovery and interaction design.

Using an impact-to-effort assessment (factoring in both design and Shaale team commitments), we prioritised “turning visitors into users” as the most effective starting point.

Using mockups to help the client visualise the recommendation

To help team Shaale understand how they can implement the recommendations derived through the user research, I created mock ups of the landing page and the subscription page. The pages convey how Shaale can:

Clarify the value proposition
- Develop concise messaging about Shaale’s core offerings.
- Highlight unique features: exclusive content, tech-powered learning, and access to maestros.
Simplify exploration for the first time visitor
- Create frictionless entry points to explore free content or features.
  Introduce quick onboarding prompts or micro-tutorials to explain benefits and functionality.

Conclusion: evidence-driven design creates a strategic impact and drives value.

Realigning Shaale's platform for success

This case study demonstrates how I used user research to shed light on a startup’s unidentified challenges.

A lack of clarity was identified as the primary barrier to user acquisition. I then provided Shaale with a prioritised, actionable plan to overcome this. This directly addressed user needs, enabling the company to convert visitors into paying subscribers.

The evidence and learning from the user tests were powerful forces that helped the Shaale team see: the way the perceive the platform is not the same as the way their users do.

Skanda, the founder, described the insights as “very comprehensive and insightful,” particularly appreciating the focus creating commercial value through the impact-effort assessment.