Spotify Social
Expanding user-to-user interaction through music-sharing
Lead UX and interaction design
concept of Spotify's iPhone app
User Research / UX/UI Designer / Prototyping & User Testing
Overview
Spotify, leader on streaming music, wants to make a move into helping us connect through music.
Spotify's mission is clear: “to help people listen to whatever music they want, whenever they want, wherever they want—in a completely legal and accessible way.” As the leader of music streaming service industry, Spotify provides 30+ million songs to more than 157 million active users and 71 million paying subscribers worldwide. The company is certainly on the track of achieving its mission.
However, the music-listening relationship shouldn't just be a vertical one between listeners and Spotify. To improve user engagement and retention in the app, Spotify aim to multiply and strengthen the horizontal connections between its large user base by expanding on its social capabilities.
Defining Goals
Began with gathering insights from casual music listeners and hardcore fans.
Based on the business goal of increasing user-to-user interactions and common pain points of music-listening behaviors retrieved from user interviews, I created aspirational user goals and design prompts to explore viable solutions:
- Help me feel good about sharing music to my friends
How might we help them share music suggestions more intuitively? - Help me listen to all song suggested by my friends easier
How can we offer listeners easy access to all of the suggested songs? - Let me interact with my favorite artists
How might we promote artist-to-fans interaction in an enjoyable way within a mobile app?
Exploration
I tested low-fidelity sketches of new functions with users to figure out what works and what doesn't.
The exploration focused on gauging potential solutions' effectiveness that may help users share and receive recommended music by friends without leaving the Spotify app. I have also designed low-fidelity sketches for a broadcasting feature that may promote in-app interaction between artists and fans.
Lo-Fi Screens
Findings & Synthesis
- Interviewees all shared in a universal feeling of accomplishment and respect when friends appreciate the music recommended.
- The social interaction features best performs within the app. Primary research shows that many users currently shares music via YouTube links on social media. However, the commitment of clicking a link seems to be too burdensome to the recipient.
- Embed recommendation function in all content-consuming screens will accelerate the music suggestion process and increase the likelihood of suggesting to any friends in mind.
- Knowing what artists, celebrities, and athletes listen to does not spark additional usage in Spotify. However, live broadcasting of artists' performances (ex. jam sessions) would draw listeners to tune in.
“My friends send me YouTube links of songs to check out. But I don’t usually click them. It’s such a hassle to go to YouTube.”
Concept Live feature
The Solution
Introducing Recommend and Live
Below are a few user flows and high-fidelity prototype I created to encourage user-to-user and artist-to-fan interaction. Your Library > Friends also provides a quick shortcut to locate friends.
Recommend is designed to be native throughout the app, giving listeners opportunities to suggest music to friends on Spotify.
Live is the new feature created to make Spotify a live performance streaming choice for verified musicians. This also can be where serious amateurs broadcast their talents for the world to discover.
Recommend user flow
Live with Recommend features