OVERVIEW
As a music streaming service provider, Spotify is leads the group. It's a position that they want to maintain. In order to do that they know they have to continuously improve user engagement and retention in the app. by developing new features that will enhance the user experience.
THE CHALLENGE: Is to design a new feature that embeds well and smoothly with the rest of the app that elevates user engagement and builds meaningful connections with its users.
ROLE & DURATION: UX/UI Designer with the following responsibilities:
80 Hours
RESEARCH
Since the feature has yet to be determined for this project a strong emphasis was put on the research.
Research Goals: Understand how users engage with music streaming platforms. Uncover what new or upcoming music streaming experiences that are trending among the community.
Direct competitors: analyzing a few of Spotify's direct competitors its evident on the surface the ability to stream and finding curated music playlists is efficient. There are however, at least one feature that is unique to their platform that sets them apart: Soundcloud with their DJ tool integration and Apple Music with their original shows, concerts and exclusives.
Indirect competitors: Afterwards I wanted to look into other platforms that users may listen to music and the two I want to focus on was music videos or live streaming. Youtube leads with music videos and high user engagement. Then you have Twitch which is a platform for live streams that DJ's perform on and able to interact with users.
USER INTERVIEWS: I conducted two rounds of user interviews. For the first round, I interviewed 4 participants to gain empathy of user habits and behaviors when streaming music on the platforms they use. Also, how they engage with those platforms.
From these interviews I found out an average user actively listens to music 1 hour to 2 hours a day tops and that their engagement with the platforms they use is sporadic at times. The users mentioned that streaming music from their own created playlists is the main activity user spends the most time doing on the music streaming platforms. The other main activity users spend a lot time doing is searching for new music from sources available to them on those platforms. Other user engagements that these participants have in common is listening to music on video or by live performance streaming. Video specifically holds a special interest to these users because the they feel they have a better connect with the music or artist that they are listening to and the same goes for that same reason on live streaming music. In addition, the live music streaming experience allows users to share and bond over music they are listening to in real time.
USER INTERVIEWS (ROUND 2): Taking what was learned from the first round of user interviews. The scope of the second round of interviews was to gain an understanding how users that use Spotify interact with the platform and discover music. To also see if they're any pain points they might have. A total of 4 interviews were conducted. Here are the main findings I gathered from the participants.
Besides streaming music users turn to Spotify to discover new music. Music they hear from outside sources like friends or songs they might of heard in the coffee shop. They also rely on discovering new music from Spotify's curated playlists and less so from friends playlists. Therein lies one pain point that a few of the participants have with Spotify. The users expressed that Spotify has a great feature that is the friends activity bar that shows users what their friends are listening to on the platform and that they sometimes discover a new song from their friends activity. However, users felt this activity bar was being underserved.
PERSONA AND EMPATHY MAP: Meet Misha who I created based on the user interview findings. The persona and the empathy map which represents the user journey will be used as an anchor and guide as I continue with the design process.
DEFINE & IDEATE
Taking all the research conducted into consideration. I then drafted 15 "How Might We" statements. Of the 15 HMW statements I chose 3 to address.
How might we statements:
How might we help users find other users with similar taste in music?
How might we help users find out what songs their friends are listening to that the user currently does not have in any of his/her playlists?
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How might we get our users to collaborate more with each other?
CRAZY 8's: In this quick design sprint exercise, the purpose is to start generating ideas how to address the proposed how might we statements. For this project I repeated this exercise 5 times yielding 40 design ideas.
Story Boards: Taking the ideas generated in the crazy 8 exercise, I then chose one how might we statement to focus on to further develop the details of the interaction of the solution on how it might work with a story boarding brain storming exercise. The HMW statement I chose to focus on was Considering the the following how might we statement:
"How might we help users find out what songs their friends are listening to that the user currently does not have in any of his/her playlists?"
INTERACTION DESIGN
Using the storyboards to help initiate the user interaction design I then created the user flow. Followed by designing the wireframes.
USER FLOW: Shows how a user would launch the new feature in the app and the direct path as well as alternate paths a user could take to complete the main task. The user flow shows the pages and decisions the user needs to cross to find songs from their friends playlist and add them to users own playlists.
WIREFRAMES: Now that the various screens have been identified in the user flow and with the storyboards as a template designing the initial set of mid fidelity wireframes was relatively quick process. These wireframes show a little more of the interaction of the new feature within the app.
USER INTERACTION DESIGN
Prior to creating the high-fidelity wireframes for the project, an impromptu usability test was done on the mid-fidelity wireframes to validate the navigation of the new feature made sense and to gather other last minute user feedback.
HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAMES: Having gaining some early user insights from participants during the usability test on the mid-fidelity wireframes. I was able to action a couple enhancements to the experience of the new feature. For example, the friends playlist compatibility rating when selecting a friend and the categorized song results page from the search overall breaking down the song list for the user.
PROTOTYPE & TESTING
To test the usability of the designs, I created a high fidelity prototype using Figma and conducted the tests over Zoom. I recruited 4 participants all of whom are premium Spotify subscribers. Each were given the same task as I observed.
TASK DETAILS
TASK COMPLETION RATE
The task assigned to each of the participants was to search for news songs in your friends playlists and add one of those songs to your own playlist. The friend you want to search new songs from is Caleb Marks and the the song I want you to add is called Closer by Powers. Then add that song to one of the users own playlists named Weekend Vibez.
100%
ERROR FREE RATE
90%
TESTING OBSERVATIONS
All participants actioned the feature from the notification pop up. The participants also appeared to have no issues locating the friend he or she wanted to discover new songs from. As well as the song they needed to find. I also observed most of the participants play the song or preview the song before adding it to their own playlist. 3/4 did that. One automatically located the song and added it with playing it or previewing it. The usability test was a successful by completing the task. However, only half of the participants which was two fully understood what the feature did. All understood the feature was tool to find songs from their friends but a couple of the participants did not get the full detail scope what the feature was doing. Overall, the participants expressed the feature was unique and innovative. All liked it and said they would use it if it existed.
PROJECT REFLECTIONS
Designing this new feature for Spotify was challenging. This project could not be where it is now without the proper research that was conducted and all the insights gathered from the users that were interviewed. Overall, I am very please of the outcome of the design at this point in time. Does it still need to be refined? Yes. However, through the usability tests this feature does confirm that a feature like this one can improve user engagement and retention in the app. Ultimately, enhancing the user experience and the connection among friends.
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