Digital Audio Mixer for Content Creators
Reducing friction so creators can focus on their content—not their tools.
2021 - 2023 | Role: UX Lead
You shouldn’t have to be an audio expert to get good sound.
Audio mixers are powerful tools, but hundreds of controls on a single surface means the learning curve is steep.
At Mackie, we wanted to find a way to remove barriers without sacrificing the capabilities of the product.
PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS
We needed to figure out exactly what makes traditional tools so complicated. Between survey data and user interviews, we identified the most common pain points of using a mixer.
IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES
When you plot those pain points on a journey map for an average podcaster, it becomes clear that most annoyances happen during the setup and sound check phases of the process. These are where we focused our efforts.
SOLUTION #1: SETUP ASSISTANT
One of the core features we designed was a guided setup workflow. By talking to product experts and customer support representatives, we came up with a task flow that could help users connect devices and set levels. And by asking for information on those devices, we could automatically apply certain settings that tune the sound based on their answers.
Example screens showcasing the setup assistant workflow
SOLUTION #2: SCALABLE COMPLEXITY OF CONTROLS
Once the user’s devices are connected and configured, they may still need to tune the sound to suit their voice or their style. When we talked to users about how they would do this, we saw three main types of response.
SURGICAL PRECISION: Starts from a neutral/un-processed state, then uses powerful tools to sculpt the sound to their liking.
PLAY-IT-BY-EAR: Wants good sound from the start, but may use tools to dial-in the details if it doesn’t take a lot of time.
SET-AND-FORGET: Expects good sound out of the box. Generally doesn’t know what to change/how to change it, or just doesn’t have time.
To address these use-cases, we decided to create distinct skins of the user interface that gave users varying levels of control and complexity.
To determine which controls would be offered in each mode, we evaluated all the available parameters and assigned them a priority for each user type. After testing early prototypes of slimmed-down versions, we found that some parameters could be omitted completely, but some needed to be shown in a different way or replaced with an automated tool.
In the end, we created three distinct versions of the UI that gave the user only as much—or as little—control as they desired.
EASY MODE
Fully task-focused
ENHANCED MODE
Condensed tools
PRO MODE
Fully tools-focused