Spotify Music Share
Add a social feature to an existing product.
My Role
UI/UX design
Timeline
80 hours
Tools
Sketch, Paper and pen, InVision, Principle, Illustrator, Photoshop
Platform
IOS
Introduction
In this concept project, I worked as a solo designer to add a social feature that encourages connection and spark resonance among Spotify users.
Living a fast-paced lifestyle far from home, our users use music to chase off loneliness and see sharing music as a way to connect with others. However, music is personal for them, and they don’t want to be judged by their music tastes. Thus despite the desire to resonate with others, they only proactively share music when they know the other person would like the music.
I designed a feature in Spotify that shows friends’ favorite music styles and suggests friends with common music interests to users to help them spark resonance with others.
As a deep Spotify user and a person who listens to music every day, I enjoyed talking about music with users and understanding what music sharing meant to them. This project brings me new understandings of how music forms people’s relationships and their way of life.
What are our users saying about sharing music?
The Challenge and Solution
The challenge:
How might we help our users know the other person would like the music before sharing it, to encourage connection and spark resonance?”
The solution:
We designed a music sharing feature in Spotify that:
Suggests friends with common music interests to user during music sharing.
Shows friends’ favorite music styles ro encourage music sharing.
Is embedded well and smoothly with the rest of the Spotify app.
My Process
1/ Research
Competitive Analysis and Market Research
Get familiar with Spotify and other music streaming services.
Spotify’s usage, main user base, strength and weakness: To get familiar with Spotify, we started with viewing Spotify’s performance in the market. We learned about its usage, main user base, and what people speak highly of/complaining about it. Below are our findings:
1. Spotify became the second popular streaming service in the US in June 2019, with 232 million active users worldwide.
2. Spotify user base was dominated by Millennials, with 29 percent of its users aged between 25 and 34, and 26 percent aged between 18 and 24, as of March 2018.
3. People choose Spotify because of its easy-to-use interface, extensive catalog, great device compatibility, on-point music discovery tool, and highly personalized custom playlists. However, some people stated they are not fully satisfied with Spotify’s Ads in the free service and the fact that some foreign songs can not be found due to copyright restrictions.
Spotify’s current social features: To discover chances for improvement, we reviewed Spotify’s current social features. Spotify users can invite others to co-create a playlist (Collaborated Playlist), share music and account with friends by scanning Spotify code, and directly share music from Spotify to other social media.
Competitor analysis: To understand industry standards and discover opportunities to stand out, we analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of other music streaming services in the market. We found that some competitors provide video content, reviews and work with virtual assistant to attract users.
User Interview and Findings
What did we learn after talking with users about music sharing?
To learn what user pain points and unmet needs are towards music sharing, we interviewed people from 20-35 years old who listen to music at least one time each week. Our conversations were focused on participants’ latest music sharing experience. We wanted to know how they shared music, the device and platform they used, whom they shared music with, when and how it happened, and the WHY behind every answer.
Here are our key findings from the user interview:
1. Most of the participants make sure they know the other person would like the music before sharing the music.
2. Participants tend to only share music with familiar people, if not the closest people.
3. Participants see music sharing as a way to connect, communicate, and resonate.
4. Besides music, participants also share their feelings of the music, the stories behind, and information of the artist.
5. Device wise, participants mainly used phone to share music.
2/ Synthesis
Empathy Map
Discover needs and pain points behind our users’ behaviors
Based on our interview notes, we analyzed what our user see, hear, do, and think when sharing music. It helped us understand our user better and discover needs and pain points behind our user’s behaviors:
Persona
“Music is personal. Sharing music creates a way to connect and communicate.”
After speaking with our users and analyzing our observations, we started to understand our users:
Our users are in their young adulthood living an independent and fast-paced lifestyle. With friends spread across the city and everyone trying to forge their path, connecting with friends has become less easy.
For our users, sharing music creates a way to connect and communicate with others. They use music to chase off the loneliness.
They only proactively share music when they know the other person would like the music. Music is personal to our users. They don’t want to be judged by their music tastes or start a conversation then find out the other person has no similar taste in music.
We created a persona, Caroline, to remind us of our users’ needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals.
HMV Questions
Define the problem
We interpreted our research findings into 14 HMW questions. Due to the 80 hours timeline of this project, we focused on solving the challenge that our users addressed the most during user interview:
3/ Interaction Design
Crazy Eights Brainstorming
Let the Ideas Flow
We utilized the Crazy Eights Method to draw out as many ideas as possible. After five rounds of quick sketching, we generated 40 fresh ideas that focus on helping users know the other person would like the music before sharing.
After narrowing down and combining ideas, we decided to use music tags, hints, and comments to acknowledge users of common music interests with others.
We made this decision because:
1. These elements help users know if the other person would like the music before sharing it without adding effort to the user.
2. These elements can be embedded well and smoothly with the rest of the Spotify app.
Storyboard
Emerge ourselves into user’s experience to find the simplest flow
To clearly understand how users are going to use the feature we are working on, we created a storyboard and emerged ourselves into the user’s experience. It helps us find the simplest, most natural user flow, as well as bring greater insight into what the screens and wordings should be.
User flow
The simplest journey
Based on our ideation and storyboard, the user flow aimed at providing the simplest experience that helps users know the other person will like the music before sharing it. The user flow gives us insight of what screen we should create.
Hi-fi Wireframes
Initial Solutions
We focused on solving the design challenge “How might we help our users know the other person would like the music before sharing?” as well as making sure the new features embed well and smoothly with the rest of the app.
The followings are the key screens:
4/ Test and Iteration
Usability testing; Think Aloud Method; Hi-fi Prototype
Validating our design
To understand our design’s usability, we asked participants to: A. Send a song to a friend; B. Receive a song from a friend, using the hi-fi prototype. While interacting with the prototype, participants also think aloud about their expectations and thoughts of the design.
🎉The success:
100% of the participants were able to complete the tasks without us interfering.
With the help of the music tags and hints, participants quickly found the friend who love the song to share with.
We received many positive comments about the music tags, hints, and message sending function:
“Adding a comment is cool. I can send more than just the song.”
“It’s good to know that some of my friends like this song, too.”
We also improved our design based on participants’ feedback:
Priority revisions
Improve our design based on usability test findings
Based on results from usability testing, we made the following revisions to the initial design:
✔️Improvement one
✔️Improvement two
✔️Improvement three
Improved hi-fi wireframes and user flow
The evolved design
With better visual hierarchy, intuitive wordings, and a more natural flow, the improved design encourages connection and spark resonance by helping users know the other person would like the music before sharing.
“I like this. I think it’s very useful. If I know my friends like this kind of music, I might share it to them. It’s a great way to start a conversation.”
- Jim, participants
Reflections
Learning one: Fewer steps don’t always mean good. In the initial design, we put the “Add comment” step and the “Pick friend” step on one page, thinking this is the simplest solution. It turns out during usability testing, almost none of the users noticed the “Add comment” section and only selected friends on that page. Users were expecting to add a comment with the music right before sending it out. We learned that sometimes more steps lead to a smoother flow, and we should always verify the usability of design by testing with users.
Learning two: Practicing the Crazy Eight method in the early stages of the ideation process. Under a tight schedule of 80 hours, adopting this method encouraged us to draw out as many ideas as possible in a time-efficient manner. Instead of hanging up on one idea, we discovered many good directions and combined them to spark more. It loosens up our creative muscles and let our thoughts flow.
Next steps
One of the next steps would be conducting another usability test to find out how effective our revisions are, and discover further pain points towards our design.
We also plan to research with more users in terms of the practicality of the current design. After interacting with our prototype, some participants asked if there is a more casual way of sharing music. Sometimes, sharing music happens naturally during a conversation; the whole sharing process doesn’t have to rely so much on the phone. We find this point of view very interesting, so for the next step, we would like to find out if there are some alternative solutions to better help users share music and find connections.