Spotify

Desktop music app

Target User

Music streaming audience who want easy access to their music.

Goal

Making Spotify more social!
This study aims to identify opportunities for Spotify and its customers to improve engagement and retention.

My Role

User Research, information architecture, interaction design,
and UI Design.

Research

User Interviews
Secondary research
Persona
Empathy Map
Storyboard

Strategy / IA

User flow
Crazy 8
If I might ideation

UX / UI

Wireframes
Prototypes

Iteration and
Implementation

Usability testing
Affinity map

Background

Spotify is a leading streaming music service that makes their customers happy with engaging content and functions. However, is there room for more social interactions with customers? Becoming another social network may dilute the core product and consume enormous resources. In fact, Spotify removed the messaging capabilities earlier in 2017 due to low engagement.

“Occasionally I’ll post YouTube music videos to my Facebook page and friends are welcome to listen.”

Research

Objectives

  • Discover streaming music user patterns
  • Uncover streaming music user social sharing patterns
  • Key factors for music social sharing

Methodology

  • Secondary research on streaming music markets and business models
  • User interviews
  • Synthesize key findings

Secondary research

My secondary key findings on Spotify:

Music content is everywhere

  • Music content is not unique, it is available everywhere. *
  • Streaming music is a crowded market, competitors include SoundCloud, Pandora, Tidal, Deezer and IHeartRadio.

Videos are more engaging

  • Youtube "...accounts for 25 percent of all music streamed worldwide, more than any other sites."**
  • Videos are the most viral content on social media.***

Big competitors

  • Large streaming music competitors include Apple Music, Amazon, and Google. These competitors don't rely on music as sole revenue source.

Spotify needs unique content

  • Like Netflix, Spotify needs to generate unique content that attracts and retain customers. 
  • Spotify curated playlists is currently their most popular original content.
* https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/12/trouble-brewing-for-spotify.aspx
** https://www.registercitizen.com/business/article/Why-musicians-are-so-angry-at-the-world-s-most-11961395.php
*** http://buzzsumo.com/blog/the-most-shared-facebook-content-posts-videos

User interview findings

Core product value

  • Spotify is easy to use, great content and integration with other apps.
  • Spotify playlists are good source of discovering new music.
  • Users listen to music for lots of reasons, enjoyment, studying, exercise, and parties.

Music is personal

  • There was a wide range of feelings about personal music taste. Emotions ranged from feeling private, apathetic to pride.
  • Most users were somewhat interested what friends were listening. Only some friends have good taste in music.
  • Established artist playlists are more interesting and useful.

Types of content

  • Funny videos, pictures and gifs are the most engaging social content. They are great for sharing and responding.

Sharing and feedback

  • Music without visuals or videos, does not get responses.
  • Users stopped sharing due to lack of response.
  • Users tend to share one-on-one by text or FB messenger outside of the Spotify environment. 
  • There are friends who don't use Spotify or pay for steaming music.
“It’s (Spotify) so easy to use, they also have a great algorithm where they find obscure artists that are similar.”

“If there’s a video with the music, of course, I’ll share that instead of just the music because it’s more interesting to watch.”

My findings made me explore the desktop app for my project. 

  • The mobile app provides music when people are active, task focused. People used other social apps like instagram more.
  • The desktop app presented more opportunities for social interaction. It’s often used when users are sitting for long periods of time. The desktop app already has the friends activity social panel. 
  • People I interviewed were used to sharing with friends by text or messenger apps. They didn’t have an urgent need for a native Spotify sharing feature. Some of them knew about the old message feature and didn’t use it.

User profile

Persona, empathy map and a storyboard were created based on the collected data. The user experience and needs are guides throughout the design process.

“The social interactions on Spotify is a nice bonus, but I still use it for music. I don’t expect social interactions when I use Spotify.”

Persona


Empathy map

Key research insights

The current Spotify social interaction flow does not give users feedback for sharing.

“I group texted (using Iphone Messages app) my wedding party playlist to nine people, all going to the party and I got two followers on the playlist.” “But I don’t know who the followers are?”


“I used to share music with my friends, but people didn’t respond, and I stopped.”

Ideation

I used the how might we and Crazy 8 ideation techniques. I iterated on the Crazy 8 by writing down ideas and getting feedback from my co-worker in a 20 minute brainstorm session. Out of seven we narrowed down three ideas.


Local Events and Local Playlists features could be exciting to explore. I chose to study feed control based on my research findings. I considered the types and the levels of response. A full messaging flow could be too much to ask of the user. I thought a user could respond with just emojis.

Storyboards and wireframes

Alyssia interacts with friends on the desktop at work.
Alyssia sends her friend a playlist on mobile.


Below are the wire flows I made based on my ideation exercises. I chose to explore the desktop environment based on my findings that most users don't want interactions while they listen to music on their phones, traveling or out of reach.

Then I built and tested the high fidelity desktop prototype with Marvel. I found my interaction points to be very subtle.

Iteration and Implementation

I interviewed five people for my usability test focusing on three key tasks.

1. Interact when a friend is listening to the same song.
2. Listen to a song a friend is playing and then add that song to their list.
3. Filtering a friend from the social feed

Interview findings

Successes

  • Prototype recreates the Spotify desktop app and users were very comfortable.
  • Smiley face is easy to understand and use.
  • Playing song and adding song buttons next to each other is useful.
  • Filtering friend from social feed can be useful

User Patterns

  • Spotify goes to the default browse page first instead of a user profile page.
  • Spotify has the featured functions on the left, center and bottom. The social features are on the neglected right side.

Frictions

  • Users don’t know desktop app features. They did no know about clicking on a friend’s profile picture to play a song.
  • Prototype icons are small, hard to see.
  • Prototype needed rollovers to instruct users.
  • The “say hi” prompt creates anticipation for heavier social interaction. Users wanted to know how they can send message.
  • Users want to add songs to a specific playlist or destination so they can find it again.
  • Social filter button may be in the wrong location.

Fixes

  • Switch the order of tasks 1 and 2. Have user play song first and get feedback from friend.
  • Create browse page for next prototype.
  • Indicate light social interactions with simpler icons or emojis.
  • Provide function buttons next to social prompts.
  • Provide sort function to adding a song.

Next steps

  • Explore the interactions of two users listening to the same song further. My project explored liking and muting. Are there other interactions when User A notices that User B is playing a song?
  • Explore designs of interaction buttons
  • Explore location of interaction buttons
  • Test “add” button vs “more” button for adding songs
  • Test different prompts to engage user
  • Explore interactions of personal playlists

Project takeaways

  • Social interaction may not be appropriate for every product. I looked at time and how users were using Spotify. Listening to music can a very personal and private experience, social interactions may not be what users want.
  • I fascinated with my secondary research findings on streaming music, Spotify, and the market impact of Youtube.
  • I learned a lot about social sharing dynamic. Sharing and receiving an acknowledgment is the fundamental fuel of any social interaction. That acknowledgment is both the feedback, the goal, and the reward users want. Currently, there's no acknowledgment when a user shares on Spotify.
  • I was not surprised to find that most engaging social media was videos, cat videos rule!
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