Spotify New Feature
research | definition | ideation & strategy | prototyping | iteration
Background
Spotify is a music streaming service that provides content from record labels and media companies. Spotify is a freemium service that doesn't focus heavily on the social media aspect, they tried in the past and are doing it in the present.
Challenge
Spotify as a streaming music service is the biggest, but socially it's lacking. They have tried to improve engagement and retention in the app through different functionalities. One example was the messaging feature that was removed in 2017 for failing to engage with users. Internal sharing through the app is missing and my assumption is that the external one is too slow.
Approach
I applied a heavy research process. Starting with a first group and open-ended questions to find possible problems and pain points. After that, the interview plan was done with a second group with closed questions to deeply pinpoint a problematic. "Internal Sharing" was chosen and the iteration step proceeded.
Project Duration: 50 hours.
Role:
UX/UI Design
Research
Interaction Design​
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Tools:
Adobe PSD, Illustrator​
Invision
Maze
1
EMPATHIZE
Methodologies: Primary & Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis, Interviews, Persona Creation, Variable Chart.
RESEARCH GOALS:
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Learn about past features Spotify has made in the area of sharing music.
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Explore current motivations for sharing music (if any) and finding ideas for improving.
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Find any pain points and barriers within the sharing experience and how to fix them.
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Understand the motivations, goals and pain points of users when using Spotify and their social-sharing features.
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Learn from existing clients the strengths and weaknesses of the service.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS:
The research phase started by analyzing the current services of the music streaming industry through a competitive analysis. This highlighted the weaknesses and strengths of all apps. With this information, I validated and discarded some assumptions and learned how best to approach and created my interview guide.
​
Weaknesses
Strengths
INTERVIEWS:
Six participants in total were interviewed. Three of them in person, one at a Shelter close to home and lastly two via Skype. My analysis was focused on the users that had previously adopted and knew the process. Their experience was discussed, what motivated them to adopt and what frustrated their process of adoption. The information was extremely helpful to determine features and avoid failures.
INTERVIEWS:
Five participants were interviewed in person first with open-ended questions. I practiced empathy by focusing on their experiences and the stories they shared about how they share music in different environments, or why they don't share at all. Afterward, five more participants were interviewed with more specific closed questions. Their experience was discussed, what motivated them to use Spotify and how they shared their music. With the results, a variable chart was mapped with their behaviors.
FINDINGS:
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Free service is lacking depending on the country.
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Most users are happy with the service but would like it to be more sociable.
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Not everyone likes sharing music, most feel shy about their tastes.
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Not everyone is big on music, some feel it is detrimental to their focus.
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Users that like sharing do it way more privately than publicly.
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There is no internal way of sharing music.
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Most users share music using other apps.
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Sharing feature is too slow and hidden.
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Receiver cant hear the shared song if he doesn't have an account created.
PRIMARY PERSONA:
I developed a persona to synthesize and illustrate my findings in human terms. I compiled behavioral attributes most common to the interview participants, creating the following primary persona, Rafaella Montenegro a professional millennial that uses Spotify commonly and only shares music sporadically in a private manner.
2
IDEATE
Methodologies: User flow, Sketches, Interaction Design.
SKETCHES:
With the problematic and approach selected and my research findings, I decided to solve this barrier by creating a fast and conspicuous way to share songs internally. I brainstormed some ideas to find a solution and started sketching them.
USER FLOW:
Two user flows were created to depict the flow of the sender and the receiver. I created this image to show each step my persona would take to perform the following task: sharing a song with a friend. It includes a parallel path to outline how his friend would receive it.
A single user flow was created to demonstrate the path our persona user, Miguel Paredes, would follow to complete the task in my page, in this case, the adoption of a pet, through the website. This path is showing a user that knows he wants to adopt a specific type of dog and follows a seamless flow to acomplish it.
notification icon
notification bar replaces
social bar to keep
consistency
3
DESIGN
Methodologies: Interaction Design, UI Design.
INTERACTION DESIGN:
This was started by designing the main windows through high-fidelity to test the user flow and find possible barriers. I decided to skip wireframes and low fidelity designs to safe time.
UI DESIGN:
Spotify already has a well-established material design, creating the screens over screenshots was chosen as the best course of action to test the prototype. The social screen pop up was designed to match the find friend screen, to create a seamless process and avoid confusion with the new feature. The notification bar, on the other hand, was designed over the same space as the social bar, for the same reasons. I had the assumption that having all the notifications in one bar (friends songs played and shared) was confusing, and planned to prove that on the usability test.
4
PROTOTYPING & TESTING
Methodologies: Usability Testing, Findings, Next Steps.
USABILITY TESTING:
Using the high fidelity designs I put up a prototype on Invision. Had to find two groups of participants (for a total of 8) to test the sender and receiver of the song. One group was asked to send the song being played to a friend and the other to listen to the song shared. A tutorial was created to showcase the new features. Since my Invision is free both tests were done in the same prototype in person but a version was created using Maze to finish the test with one online participant.
FINDINGS:
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75% of participants finished the task without error.
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All participants understood the new features and said the tutorial helped explain them.
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All participants tried to access non-working elements.
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25% of participants mentioned without the tutorial they wouldn't have found the share button.
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100% of the participants found the new share feature (after using it) faster and quality of life-changing.
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Half the participants asked for "recently shared songs" space (on work).
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One participant asked for more visual feedback between heard and unheard songs.
Other Projects
REFLECTIONS & NEXT STEPS:
Adding a social feature to an established product such as Spotify is demanding so the problematic and approach had to be the right one. The research was fundamental, so understanding how users share their music and why was the key. The right challenge emerged when most users mentioned they don't share music through Spotify because the process is complex. This led me to the supporting insight for the feature — Wanting to share music means connection and its special, and it should be possible to do it seamlessly.
Some of the people I interviewed did not share songs quite often for different reasons. However, after playing around with the prototype, they appreciated the idea of having a fast and easy way to share songs. Alas, it was not perfect, and many ideas came up for a reiteration. So my next steps, first of all, would be to finish the "recently shared songs" window. Adding it into the library is also interesting but needs further testing.
Lastly, more visual feedback between notifications clicked and unclicked is vital.
