Mosi Nova
Driving a 29% increase in Nova MIDI controller sales through a User First Product Strategy and laying the foundation for smoother future production cycles.
Background
What is Nova?
Nova is a MIDI controller built from the ground up to give synth artists expressive control usually only found in acoustic instruments. It is designed to push creative boundaries, both in the studio and on stage.
Problem Overview
A broad range of target users leading to an unclear direction
While Nova’s hardware and features are appealing, the product lacked direction. There were no well defined target users and without this foundation, decisions around feature prioritization and design felt scattered. Nova needed a structured UX audit and product strategy to move forward with clarity.
Goals
Aligning Nova’s product direction with user needs
Define core user types
Identify key usability gaps and areas of friction with the current experience.
Evaluate feature desirability and establish UX direction for future design and development decisions
Research Approach & Methods
Learning in uncontrolled environments
Guerrilla Testing & Mixed Method Surveys
80+ Participants & 72 Survey Responses
Synchronous Usability Sessions
5 Potential Customers
Semi-structured Interviews
5 Current Users
Solution Area #1
Cleaning and analyzing insights to define specific target user groups
By combining survey responses and field notes from guerrilla testing, recurring behaviors and priorities began to surface across different types of users.
These patterns were synthesized into two representative personas, each reflecting distinct workflows, goals, and frustrations observed in the research.
Solution Area #2
Feature prioritization in alignment with defined target users
Nova had an extensive feature backlog, along with new requests surfaced during the research phase. To align future development with user needs, a weighted scoring prioritization framework was used to evaluate and map features based on user sentiment.
A full list of features, both planned and requested, was evaluated using qualitative feedback gathered from usability sessions with potential users and semi-structured interviews with existing Nova users. Each feature was scored based on user sentiment.
- Liked: Feature explicitly requested or appreciated
- Neutral: Feature mentioned passively or without strong reaction
- Disliked: Feature explicitly rejected or found unnecessary
The further right a feature appears on the matrix, the more users expressed interest in it. The higher it sits, the more positively it is received overall.
- Top-right = high impact.
- Lower-left = low impact.
Features were hence ranked by impact, bringing clarity to Nova’s future roadmap and aligning upcoming development with what matters most to users.
Next Steps
Current work @Mosi Audio
Designing the Experience for Prioritized Features
With the key features now prioritized and mapped to real user needs, the next step is to design the actual flows, interactions, and touchpoints these features will require.
Strengthening the Single Point of Validation
A journey mapping exercise, carried out by other team members based on the research conducted, revealed that Nova’s only validation touchpoint post-discovery is the e-commerce storefront. Its current lack of structure and visual consistency weakens user confidence. Improving this storefront experience will reinforce Nova’s value proposition at a critical moment.
Retrospective
Learning in Uncontrolled Environments
This project was a valuable learning experience in working with diverse research methods, especially fast-paced approaches like guerrilla testing in live environments. It highlighted how much insight can be gathered even in less controlled settings when observation and synthesis are intentional.
