RESEARCH | UI | STRATEGY | INTERACTION DESIGN

CHALLENGE

Design a new social feature for Spotify that integrates seamlessly into the app’s existing UI in iOS. The social feature should serve to connect people through music, and not interfere with current user flows and paths in Spotify. The timeline was 80 hours over 2 weeks.

SOLUTION

A playlist feature that makes sharing music with a close friend delightful and easy. Friends can collaborate on a playlist, and Spotify will help incorporate recommendations from the friends who know you best into your Daily Mix.

BACKGROUND

Spotify is the leader in streaming music worldwide. With over x million users listening in the app every day, the potential for greater social connection between humans and music is huge. The new social feature should be about music, rather than just the next social network. The feature should integrate seamlessly into Spotify’s existing UI, and offer users the opportunity to connect to others through music.

Research & Empathize

MARKET COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, PROVISIONAL PERSONAS, USER INTERVIEWS, EMPATHY MAP

In my Research Plan, I defined the project’s research goals, timeline, questions, and assumptions I aimed to prove or disprove:

• Spotify needs a social feature that connects people through music. 

• Users want to connect with other people through the Spotify app.

• Users are using one or more music streaming services/apps to listen to and discover new music.

MARKET RESEARCH

I delved into research by learning as much as I could about Spotify and its main competitors. In just the last few years, streaming has become the dominant way that people enjoy their music. 62% of revenue in the music industry is coming from Apple Music and Spotify. A cornerstone of Spotify’s offerings is its Daily Discovery playlists and recommended music based on the listener’s music habits. Music streaming can only stand to benefit from continuing to improve their algorithms and systems for creating recommendations.

• Americans spend more than 32 hours a week listening to music through streaming services.

• 72% of all weekly streams are by Millennials.

• 67% of Spotify streams are through mobile devices.

• Millennials spend an average of 143 minutes streaming music every day.

Spotify is leading the global music streaming service with 157 million monthly users. They offer a deep catalogue of more than 30 million songs, which is constantly expanding. It’s accessible on most every platform and allows for storing, saving, and accessing music at any time. There are options to keep your account private, or share your listening habits with friends. You can create playlists, and discover new music through personalized recommendations.

PROVISIONAL PERSONAS

From my research, I identified two primary provisional personas.

Ana, The Seeker, always has her headphones plugged in and wants a steady stream of good music recommendations to take her through the day. She wants to hear new music each day and the Daily Mix satisfies that - as long as songs aren’t repeating too much. She likes to share playlists with friends occasionally, but Spotify is her primary source for new music discovery.

Chris, The Heavy Rotator, is dedicated to his favorite bands, and likes it that way. He maintains a select library, and usually listens during his commute. He finds Spotify useful for cuing up the latest releases, and is concerned about good sound quality.

INTERVIEWS

I sat down for interviews with 6 participants. All were between the ages of 26-32, and listen to music daily. Four were Spotify users and two used Apple Music daily. I asked each listener about their habits around discovering new music, sharing music with friends, how they listen to Spotify or a streaming music service, and what they do when they receive or give a music recommendation.

• All participants reported that they use their phones primarily if not exclusively to stream.

• Participants reported listening the most while in the car, at work, and sometimes at home.

• Participants discover new music through word of mouth from friends, Spotify’s discover features, and music website news.

• Participants reported sharing music with friends through word of mouth, texting or emailing.

• Several participants reported using Spotify as a way to immediately save a recommendation when a friend gave them one in conversation.

• All participants reported that they don’t like the social aspect of Spotify. Many of them keep their account private. Some did say they liked to see what friends are listening to on Spotify.

• Many participants said that they like Spotify for its accessibility and selection of music.

EMPATHY MAP & INSIGHTS

To synthesize my interview research, I constructed an empathy map, gathering thoughts, feelings, and quotes from interviewees with sticky notes. Gradually patterns emerged, and I pinpointed some insights which led to the identification of user needs in using Spotify to share music:

INSIGHT: Listeners don’t see Spotify as a social network and prefer to keep their listening habits private, but will share single recommendations with friends.

INSIGHT: Listeners are utilizing workarounds to share music with friends outside of the Spotify app.

USER PERSONA

Based on the user needs I identified, I developed a user persona to visualize the user while designing the Spotify feature. Adam’s goals are to share and discover music, easily and intuitively, maintain social interactions online with just a small group of friends, and to keep his everyday listening habits private.

Defining Goals & Brainstorming

POV STATEMENTS & HMW QUESTIONS, TEAM BRAINSTORMING, PRODUCT ROADMAP, BUSINESS & USER GOAL CHART

In preparation for ideation, I once more looked at the user needs and goals I’d identified through research. Reframing them as Point-of-View statements and How Might We? questions helped focus on the problems to solve. I recruited a couple of brainstorming teammates to generate ideas around two questions. We focused on the first two questions on the list for rapid ideation.

POINT OF VIEW STATEMENT

Listeners need a way to exchange recommendations with friends since they have a sharing relationship with just a few people. 

Listeners need to be able to share music privately with friends because they don’t see Spotify as a social network and prefer to keep their listening habits private. 

Listeners need a way to connect with people whose musical tastes they appreciate because they want music curated just for them. 

I introduced the project with background, research findings, and the questions we’d be working on. With plenty of sticky notes and a timer, we quickly wrote out as many ideas as we could think of within a few minutes, slapping down notes on the table. When time was up, we discussed the ideas and identified our favorites. Thanking my teammates for their work, I distilled the brainstorming session into concrete feature plans and prioritized them with a product roadmap.

BUSINESS & USER GOALS

The direction for the new Spotify feature was taking shape. To check that the direction of the project matched the business goals and to anticipate any technical challenges, I put everything together on a chart to define where the business and user goals overlapped:

1. Connect friends to share music.

2. Choose what to share and what to keep private.

3. Receive recommendations from friends.

Design & Prototyping

SITEMAP, USER FLOW, TASK FLOW, SKETCHES, WIREFRAMES IN SKETCH

Since the new features would be incorporated into an existing app architecture, I used screens from the app audit to lay out the existing screens and show where the new features would be incorporated (highlighted in green). I created a user flow and a task flow, thinking carefully about the steps and paths users would need to take to interact with the social features I’ve designed.

WIREFRAMES

I started designing the screens with some lo-fi sketches on paper, including sketching some existing screens to be sure that the design of my new features incorporated into Spotify’s UI. Since I would be working with an existing app, I started in Sketch by re-creating some of the app’s screens from scratch, being particularly careful to replicate Spotify’s color palette, gradients, buttons, icons, and other elements that make their UI so defined. I created the new playlist creating and sharing features to incorporate into existing screens.

Prototype & User Testing

INVISION PROTOTYPE, IN PERSON TESTING, AFFINITY MAP

I plugged the finished wireframes into InVision and created a mobile prototype. For user testing, I used my phone and users navigated via hotspots. The InVision prototype is archived, please contact me you’d like to view it.

Testing was done with 3 users due to time constraints. I wrote a script with user flows and tasks, and described scenarios to testers which asked them to go through the process of sharing music with a friend, discovering new music recommended by a friend, and creating a custom playlist for a friend to collaborate on. Pretty quickly, some patterns become apparent. Some of the notifications were not displaying fully, and some language in the scripted scenario did not match up to the language used in the app. When I saw these patterns emerge, I knew it was time to make improvements before testing again.

To wrap up, I put together a UI Kit for Spotify’s design, including the icons and details for features I’d incorporated, along with pertinent album art and gradient hex codes.

Summary & Takeaway

Designing within restraints provides many opportunities to learn. Creating a feature with the goal of seamlessly integrating it into Spotify’s UI required painstaking attention to every pixel and gradient, but it taught me a lot about how well the app utilizes hierarchy, icons, and careful use of that trademark green. The feature ideas I designed generated a lot of positive response from users, despite the hiccups in the prototype testing. I found this to be an engaging and challenging feature to design, and ss a researcher, I really felt like I got a lot of benefit from talking with users about one of my favorite things: music. The aim of this feature was to connect people through music, and the interviews with users and testing provided many opportunities to engage deeply with other people, and get some great music recommendations too!