Heuristics Report for Spotify
Spotify App (2023 iOS 8.8.75.709)
I love using Spotify and use the mobile app to listen to songs and episodes on the go, curating playlists and discovering new music. However, there are four recently identified interactions which could be potential usability issues and subsequently provide recommendations for improvements.
Note: this evaluation is not exhaustive.
Evaluation Methodology
- Using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 general principles for interaction design, potential issues that could make it difficult for users to interact with the product were identified.
- Issues were documented, providing clear descriptions and supporting screenshots.
- Each issue was evaluated by giving it a rating based on its impact on user experience, using a scale between 1 (non-issue) and 4 (severe).
- Issues were prioritised by comparing their severity against the effort required to fix them.
- Recommendations and design suggestions aiming to enhance usability and user experience are offered for each identified issue.
✔️ Marking Episodes as played
❌ Visibility of system status
Violation: The overall user experience is highly satisfactory. However, there were specific instances where the app lacked in delivering timely information about ongoing processes, which affected its usability. Notably, when marking a podcast episode as played, there is neither
a) feedback showing the process of marking the episode as played
b) nor feedback when restoring the episode using the “UNDO” button in the snack bar.
Although a button for error prevention is offered, there is no certainty, that the system is performing the task of marking or undoing the aforementioned task.
The episode disappears and reappears after an unknown amount of seconds. This highlights the need to improve the visibility of this specific system status during these processes to ensure a more informative and transparent user experience.
Severity: 3 🟠
Solution Proposition: Using animated backgrounds, icons and animated transparency, the user receives clear and timely feedback on the process of marking episodes as played.
➕ Adding Songs to the Queue
❌ User control and freedom
Violation 1:
- After adding a song to the queue the action can’t be undone unless 1.) navigating to the current song being played then 2.) navigating to the queue and then 3.) removing the song from the queue.
- Clicking on the snack bar does not take the user to the queue.
- On the options screen for a queued song, the song itself can be added again to the queue but not removed.
Severity: 3 🔴
❌ Error prevention
Violation 2: Adding a song to the queue cannot be undone easily by unsing the common pattern of the undone-button in the snack bar.
Severity: 3 🔴
❌ Recognition rather than recall
Violation 3: After adding a song to the Queue from a list of songs there is a lack of visibility which song has been queued.
Severity: 3 🔴
Solution Proposition: Add label to queued song, indicating it has been queued. Additionally, change the menu action from “add to queue” to “remove from queue” for queued songs. Allow the action to be undone via snack bar.
📂 Accessing downloaded episodes
❌ Error prevention
Violation: While accessing downloaded podcast episodes under ‘My Episodes’ the user is presented with an empty state screen if there are no downloads available.
Severity: 2 🟠
Solution Proposition: The empty state and error could be avoided by disabling the ‘Downloaded’ button.
Analysis Report
Though its performance in ‘Visibility of system status’, ‘User control and freedom’ ‘Error prevention’ and ‘Recognition rather than recall’ was not 100%, the heuristic analysis of the Spotify mobile app revealed that it performed admirably in most of the 10 evaluated heuristic principles. Spotify excels in providing users with easy navigation and undo capabilities. Users are empowered to effortlessly navigate through the app’s interface and undo actions as needed — — again, in most cases.
