Spotify Mobile App
Reimagine the Spotify Experience with better social integration and music discoverability
Duration: 6 weeks
Role: Product Design / User Research / Prototyping / Information Architecture / Branding / Business Strategy / Design System
Time: 2022
Spotify’s vision is clear: “we envision a cultural platform where everyone can enjoy an immersive artistic experience that enables us to empathize with each other and to feel part of a greater whole.” As a leader in streaming music services, Spotify wants to improve user engagement and retention in the app.
In order to increase user engagement, and help the platform grow the business in a win-win situation, I want to innovate in users’ listening experience by increasing search efficiency and social capability.
Featured Items
How can we listen to music more meaningfully & efficiently?
Design Goal: To conceptualize and design features for Spotify that will help improve user engagement and retention by increasing search efficiency, new music discoverability, and expanding social capabilities.
Final designs at a glance
Competitive analysis
Key insights from user reviews
-
Inefficiency and inaccuracy in searching for music.
-
Inconvenience in previewing new music
-
Group session users experience difficulty playing in the same space, it needs the option to play from just one person’s phone.
-
lack of social integration to share with friends
Design process
Gen Z user demographic
Jordan’s Spotify Experience in 24 hrs
Scenario 1 | Morning commute
In the morning, Jordan starts the day with some song recommendations on the home page. He plays them at the background to make him feel refreshed while he’s cleaning up and get ready for work.
The search feature also could be based on activities such as ‘commuting’. Jordan always uses the commuting recommendation playlist.
He also uses the ‘30s preview’ feature to get a vibe of all the songs, so that he can found out his favorite song more efficiently.
Scenario 3.1 | Lunch break
During the lunch break, Jordan went to Highline park to take a rest and enjoy his music time.
The ‘explore’ - ‘music club’ feature introduces him to music communities of similar taste. As he joins the music club about Billie Eilish, he can comment, like, and share the song with other people. Like-minded people are bonded together through music, spreading inspiration and love.
Jordan's Core User Experience
Explore music club
Iterations
Listen together
Iterations
Search music
Iterations
30s preview
Iterations
Explore nearby
Iterations
Scenario 3.2 | Explore nearby
During the lunch break, Jordan went to Highline park to take a rest and enjoy his music time.
The ‘explore’- ‘nearby’ feature allows him to connect with people nearby, understand the music trends in his city, as well as exploring music events happening around him.
Scenario 2 | Walking to the workplace
Jordan walked past the Art District in New York City and received the notification of an artist’s live events nearby.
He walked to the event and on the way hear something really nice. By using the ‘song recognition’ feature, he’s able to find the song name easily.
Design system
Scenario 3.3 | Explore friends
During the lunch break, Jordan went to Highline park to take a rest and enjoy his music time.
The ‘explore’- ‘nearby’ feature allows him to connect with people nearby, understand the music trends in his city, as well as exploring music events happening around him.
Meet Jordan
Scenario 4 | Group session in the same place
After work, he went to a party with friends, and on their way back home, they want to play music in Alex’s car. The ‘group’ session feature automatically notifies Jordan and his friends, allowing them to quickly join a group session, listen and sing along together in the same space.
Concept Ideation
-
Music Efficiency and Accuracy: 30s song preview feature to allow users to find liked music more easily.
-
Socialization capability: find people of similar music interests; listen to music with friends in a more immersive environment.
-
Convenience in finding new music: music live club - allow people to join music sessions in a fun way; music recommendation based on user activities;
Learnings and retrospect
Prioritization of task
During the process, I have generated lots of ideas and inspiration, however, with the limited time and resources, it’s crucial to prioritize what features to implement based on business goals, user goals, and technical considerations. For example, some features might have a high impact in terms of usability and business opportunities, but it’s hard to realize, or takes too long.
Respecting the system
One of the challenges is to maintain the consistency of the existing system, while also innovating new designs and features. As Spotify is already very successful and its system has been used by millions of users around the world, it’s important to understand the constraints and branding styles. However, as a project to reimagine the Spotify experience, we should also be creative and introduce something new both visually and content-wise.
Design Prioritization
%20analysis%202.jpg)