SPOTIFY SOCIAL
Adding a Social Feature to Spotify
OVERVIEW
Background
We all know that there is a special connection between human beings and music. Spotify is the leader in the music streaming industry, and they want to keep it that way. For this reason, they want to improve engagement and retention in the app. In order to do that, they want to expand on their social capabilities.
Role | UX Designer
* Project for Design Lab UX Academy Course
Objective
Spotify needs help in defining the best way to approach adding a social aspect to their existing app while not competing to be the next social media and sticking to what they value most: connecting people and music.
Solution
Researched and designed a social feature to the mobile Spotify app and created a prototype for demonstration.
RESEARCH
There have been multiple articles about how Spotify should have a social media feature. The older app even had a messaging feature which Spotify since removed because it was not doing very well. This time around, Spotify wants a way to hold user retention and I want to explore that idea in my first steps. I chose Competitor Analysis as well as User Surveys for my research methodologies to help me reach my research goals which were
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Discover how users typically share music to their peers
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Determine what social features users are most likely to use in a music app
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Identify the competitors for both music streaming and social media and define the trends and patterns
Competitor Analysis
In my research, I downloaded the top music streaming apps as well as social media apps to determine the market’s patterns and trends, which of these trends are used effectively, and how I can integrate that to Spotify.
Unique sharing capability that updates user's friends what the user is doing at the exact moment, disappears after 24 hours.
Has unlimited playlists, but can't follow friends and very limited sharing capabilities.
Will show what users friends are listening to, but there's no free version.
Can follow friends and has Snapchat integration for sharing, but free users can't create custom playlists.
User Survey
I composed a set of questions with predetermined answers that I sent out to 17 participants.
I chose participants that use music streaming apps as well as those that use social media apps. I wanted to discover what their motivations, preferences, and pain points are when it comes to sharing music with friends online. Some notable findings are:
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Majority pay for a monthly subscription
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Some share music by texting, others don’t share at all, or share through Facebook
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Majority share songs when they find good music, some share for nostalgic reasons, and others share because a song reminded them of someone
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7/17 share music through private message, 5/17 share through public post, 4/17 do both depending on what they want to share
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Top 3 social features that users would want to see in a music app:
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Download and / or add a song to a playlist from a friend's shared post
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Share a post with a song / artist / playlist /album
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See a friend's song or playlist history
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These findings helped me in creating a persona. Meet Raquelle, a 29 year old Dental Hygienist
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Wireframe Sketches
I had tons of ideas for a social feature on Spotify. These are sketches to help me visual these ideas.
IDEATION
Task & User Flows
The task flow I made has 3 possible tasks that the user can do to access the features that I have in mind for the app. The user flow outlines what actions a potential user might follow while using the added social feature on the Spotify app.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
I combined two of my initial sketches as well as incorporated some iconography as well as establish the hierarchy to create how the Feed, post, Library, and sharing history would look like.
UI DESIGN
UI Design is one of my favorite parts of the design process. Creating visual context from an idea is something that I am very passionate about and enjoy wholeheartedly.
High Fidelity Wireframes
These are my mid fidelity wireframes but fleshed out with Spotify’s branding guidelines, images, and words. I had to create a couple of new icons to help with my design such as the “Feed” icon.
ITERATION
Another favorite part of the design process is prototyping. Seeing the wireframes come to life, and having users test it bring out my ultimate passion for UX design. Seeing my creation come to life via prototype gives me a sense of satisfaction.
High Fidelity Prototype
Test Goals:
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Understand what friction points there are while trying perform any of the tasks I made
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Determine if the feature is seamlessly integrated in the app design
Task:
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Post an album to the feed
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Directly share a song to a friend from Your Library
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Look at Direct Shares between user and friend
Participants:
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10 participants age range 20 - 45
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Some were avid Spotify users, some were not
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Most cared about sharing music
Affinity Map
I took my test findings and applied them to this affinity map to have a visual representation of my research. This helped me in my priority revision and iteration which is reflected in the prototype.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the project, I was able to create a social feature for Spotify that would enable to user to share songs to a big audience, or directly share to their friends.
If given more time, I would like to flesh out the social features that I’ve added. I want the users to have the ability to change their privacy settings when it comes to sharing (to the Feed or directly to a friend) as well as set up the notifications for them.
I would also love to see an artist dashboard with the Feed integrated where the artist can share a preview of their upcoming song or album to their followers.
Not a new idea, but “Spotify Stories” would be a delight to flesh out, with 24 hour history of what the user has been listening to as well as seeing what their friends have been listening to.
Check out my work for Fryz
