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Spotify

Adding social features to the existing app

As a streaming music service, Spotify is the group leader, and it wants to stay that way. For this reason, they want to improve engagement and retention in the app. To do that, they want to expand their social capabilities.

I Wonder

Will users engage deeper and stay longer on Spotify with social features?

 

Would users love to connect with people who have the same taste in music with them?

 

Do users have a hard time gathering music from friends for specific occasions like parties, commuting, and datings?

 

Music is emotionally attached to users with memories and feelings. Would users love to record and share these attachments with friends?

My Participants Said: 

What I Learned From Interview

Music lovers would love to share their common memories and feelings on music because sharing common memories on music helps to build friendships. But they only want to share with selected friends instead of public.

​

Users need to feel confident on whether their recommendations will fit their friends’ personal preference because when sharing music, people hope their friends will like their recommendations as well and same taste on music can bring people closer.

​

Users need to collaborate on a playlist with friends for special occasions easily because people find it complicated to use Spotify's current collaborative playlist feature.

What If Spoity...

Bonds friends emotionally

@ Friends
Katherine got a new notification by Spotify because her friend, Kathy, @ her in the song "Counting Stars". Kathy said this song reminds her about their last camping experience. 
Mood
While listening to "Counting Stars", Katherine added her mood as "happy" and "singing". She can also see her Spotify friends' feeling who also added mood to this song.

Helps users share music confidently

Estimations
Katherine wants to share this song to her friends. She is glad to see the estimated chances on how likely her friends would like this song as well. She shared this song to Luke confidently.
Similarity
In order to learn her friend's music taste, Katherine opened up the music similarity chart for Kathy. She's happy to see that Kathy also loves pop and R&B. Katherine decided to share more pop songs with her.

Collaborates playlist easily

Auto-created
Katherine is commuting with 3 friends. Spotify auto-created a collaborative playlist after detecting multiple friends within 10 miles. It is easy to collaborate songs now.
One key adding
In the collaborative playlist, Katherine added her recent 5 favorite songs by clicking one key. She could not wait to hear her friends' recent favorite songs now.
Research

My Processes

1. Research

Plan

Research Goals

1.  To find out what kind of social features Spotify current have, planning to add, and suggested by users?

2. To identify Spotify’s advantages within the market by competitors analyzing.

3. Empathy Spotify users need and expectations to determine potential features.

4. Understand users behaviors, interactions, emotions while listening to and sharing music.

 

 

Research Assumptions

1.  Users will engage deeper and stay longer on Spotify with social features.

2. Users would love to connect with people who have the same taste in music with them.

3. Users have a hard time gathering music from friends for specific occasions like parties, commuting, and datings.

4. Music is emotionally attached to users with memories and feelings. Users would love to record and share these attachments with friends.

 

Methodologies

Secondary Research

Market research, Competitors analyst

 

Empathy Research

Individual Interview + observation

Secondary Research

I did secondary research on Spotify users and stream music market. It helps me understand Spotify better and determine the provisional personas for the interview. I first collected some information about Spotify users demographics and current music streaming market from Statista website. And then, I used Google to search and study other competitors for analyzing. I also collected some Spotify statics, social features they used to have and currently have.

Empathy Research

6 participants were recruited from my birthday party. During the interview, I recorded the conversations using my phone. 6 participants shared their experience, feelings, and concerns on using Spotify. 1 participant is a full-time student, 5 participants are young professionals. They are 1 male and 5 females aged 24 – 28 who are Spotify users.

Insights

  1. Sharing common memories on music can help build friendships.

  2. When sharing music, people hope their friends will like their recommendations as well and the same taste in music can bring people closer.

  3. Users find it complicated to use collaboration playlist

Needs

  1. Users want to easily share their common memories and feelings with friends.

  2. Users need to feel confident on whether their recommendations will fit their friends’ personal preference.

  3. Users need to collaborate on a playlist with friends for special occasions easier.

Persona

App Audit

Then I did an app audit for Spotify. It helps me to understand and fully explore the app. I first screenshotted every important screen in Spotify and then uploaded to Sketch. And then I organized the screenshots according to Spotify's information architecture.
Ideate
Collaborate playlist easily

2. Ideate

POV Statements & HMW

 I referred back to my empathy map and persona, think what would my persona need from Spotify, and then list out HMW according to POV statements. 

1

An emotional bond with friends through music

2

Better music recommendations to friends

3

Brainstorm

Based on my HWM questions, I tried to come out with as many solutions as possible. And then I prioritize the solutions according to my research.

Business & User Goals

This is a diagram indicating Spotify's business goal and user goals, and what's in common. It gives me a direction on next step project roadmap

Roadmap

After finding the common goals between business and users goals, I prioritized the common goals and listed out the potential features referring to my HMW brainstorming.
New Social Features to be added:
  • Friends
  • Memories
  • Sharing Suggestion
  • Similarity Diagram
  • Recommendations / Memories History
  • Create a collaborative playlist
  • Adding songs to the collaborative playlist
 
 
Define

3. Define

Sitemap

I referred back to my roadmap and create a sitemap of information architecture with key features 
 

User Flow

Task Flows

Wireframes

I did low-fidelity wireframes by hand sketches, and annotate the details and interactions.
 
Design
Test

4. Design

High-fidelity Design

UI Kit

5. Usability Testing

Affinity Map

During my testing with participants, I observe their preferences and hesitations and took notes. According to my notes, I analyze and summarize my findings.
 
Completion rate: 100%
Error Free rate: 80%
 

Iteration

According to my usability test, I found out some pain points that need to be improved. ​
 
To be Improved:
  1. Make "feeling" feature more noticeable
  2. Make "suggestion" page design more comprehensive
  3. Implying more contents in "similarity charts"
  4. Add "more options" in collaborative playlist
  5. Add another screen before "suggestion"
 
 

Final Prototype

Next Step

During my research, I found out another insight: Users need an easier approach to add new songs immediately because people have difficulties adding songs that are currently playing to their playlists on time when they are not able to interact with devices. How might we help users to add songs to a playlist without touching phone screens? I am thinking to design a tangible “+” button that can attach to clothing, cars, walls, etc, or just improve the Spotify apple watch app.
 

 

      Tools   Sketch, Invision, Photoshop

      Team   Alan Hurt (Product manager)

                  Heyi Wang (Designer)

Duration   80 Hours

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