OBJECTIVES

1. Create new feature(s) that encourage social activities among Spotify users.
2. Integrate new feature(s) with the existing Spotify app.

RESEARCH

To better understand the culture that is Spotify and its opportunity to become a new social platform for music, preliminary primary research was conducted with Spotify’s largest user demographic - the Millennials. 

I conducted semi-structured interviews with five people that can be categorized as “avid music-listeners” and “social media addicts”. Both user groups engage in the respective apps for 2 - 4 hours per day, on average. Our intention with this round of interviews was to discover the cross-section between music-listening and online social activities and user listening habits, in general. 

We gained five important insights from our interview process:

• People generally trust & enjoy the curated playlists provided by their music app of choice.
• For those who like to discover new music, friends’ recommendations are not as influential as app-curated playlists or self-built playlists. However, if the process of listening to friends' recommended song(s) is easier, most users would sample the recommendations.
• Users shared in a universal feeling of accomplishment and respect when a friend appreciates the music they recommend.
• None of the interview participants were interested in knowing/listening to what their favorite artist listened to, because “it isn’t their music”. However, should the artist to make a strong recommendation that is readily available, there was a noted willingness to check it out.
• Spotify users identified their core reasons for choosing this service by the availability of free music with limited commercials, quality of curated lists, and the massive music library.

Key information found were:

• Year-to-date, there are 140 million active users of Spotify, over 60% are Millennials who spend on average 2 hours per day on the app.
• 46 million paid users, and Spotify’s goal is to reach 100 million by 2020.
• There are total of 6 billion playlists on Spotify and averaging 5 million being created/edited daily.
• Mobile usage of Spotify is over 50%.

Design Implications

By synthesizing data from primary and secondary research methods, I extracted three design implications. These implications helped guide and direct the ideation and prototyping phase.

1. The social feature would exist best as an integrated feature versus a stand-alone function within the mobile app. Primary research showed that friend’s recommendations are not as influential as the Spotify-curated playlists due to the extra steps to sample the suggested music. 
2. Improving social activities within the app would be best explored through an inclusive music-sharing feature between connected friends.
3. Knowing what friends, artists, or athletes listen to doesn’t really spark more usage in the app, as most users are content with the playlists they have already. However, verified accounts can still instill strong influence to its followers.

IDEATION

The ideation process started with sketching with pencil & paper. With the valuable research results, I designed two main features: Recommend and Live. 

• Recommend would be integrated throughout the app. With any playlists, songs, or live sessions, the user can recommend such content to one or multiple Spotify friends, thus encouraging additional interaction within the app. 
• Live is the streaming feature that allows for any Spotify user to share their performance in real-time. Users such as an underground garage band, aspiring DJ, or a professional artist who wants to have more interaction with the fans. 

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

High-Fidelity User Flow

Playlist Recommendation

From Friends Playlist & Song Recommendation

Live

Friends

TESTING

Usability testing was conducted in-person with Invision mobile app to simulate actual usage on a mobile device. The 5-minute test provided valuable feedbacks such as:

1. The commitment of "Recommending" a song may hinder casual sharing of music. Will consider changing the name to "Suggest" or "Share".
2. The "Cancel" button at the end of the recommendation to friends was confusing. After a selection is made, the button should be "Done".
3. The location of Friend list under Your Library navigator tab is not immediately apparent to every user. This IA design is comfortable for existing users of Spotify. However, for most new users of Spotify, Search would be the first one they try. 

NEXT STEPS

It is encouraging to learn features designed received positive feedback from the final usability testing. However, with the limitation of the project timeline, many other ideas are yet to be designed and implemented.  Should this project to continue, I would focus on two priorities:

1. Continue to expand upon Live features. It can offer the top trending live sessions, certified artists' live events, Spotify sponsored events. and much more.  
2. Design the streamer's side of UI - incorporating privacy settings, declaration of music genre before streaming, and video/audio filters.