Spotify
Adding social features to the existing app
1. Background
Spotify’s mission is “to help people listen to whatever music they want, whenever they want, wherever they want—in a completely legal and accessible way.” 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.
2. 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
-
Sharing common memories on music can help build friendships.
-
When sharing music, people hope their friends will like their recommendations as well and the same taste in music can bring people closer.
-
Users find it complicated to use collaboration playlist
Needs
-
Users want to easily share their common memories and feelings with friends.
-
Users need to feel confident on whether their recommendations will fit their friends’ personal preference.
-
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.
3. 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
2
Better music recommendations to friends
3
Collaborate playlist easily
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
4. Define
Sitemap
I referred back to my roadmap and create a sitemap of information architecture with key features
User Flow
Task Flows
UI Requirements
Screens To Design
-
Homepage
-
Notification Page
-
Timeline (Memory + Recommendation)
-
Estimation / Suggestions
-
Collaborative Playlist (create + add)
High-Level Requirements
-
Consistent with existing UI
-
Notification button on the homepage
-
Timeline page for memories and recommendation history
-
CTA button to add recent favorite music into a collaborative playlist
-
A bottom bar for drop songs to the collaborative playlist
-
Estimations and sharing suggestions information box with a turn off option.
Detail Requirement
-
Homepage
notification button
auto-create collaborative playlist
-
Notification
differentiate checked and unchecked recommendations
-
Friends Timeline
memories / recommendations timeline
-
Estimation / Suggestions
showing the level of the successful chance of recommendation
showing charts on which other friends may like your music
allow users to check your similarity diagram with a friend
-
Collaborative Playlist
options for accept / ignore joining a collaborative playlist
an expandable bar for adding/viewing songs
CTA button to add recent favorites automatically
A full list of songs
instruction for the users
Wireframes
I did low-fidelity wireframes by hand sketches, and annotate the details and interactions.
5. Design
High-fidelity Design
UI Kit
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:
-
Make "feeling" feature more noticeable
-
Make "suggestion" page design more comprehensive
-
Implying more contents in "similarity charts"
-
Add "more options" in collaborative playlist
-
Add another screen before "suggestion"