Spotify — feature integration
Design sprint — integrating 4 new features into Spotify
My role
For the Spotify project, I was part of a 3 member team tasked with integrating 4 new features.
Timeframe
This project was a 7 day design sprint. We were handed our project brief on a Friday and presented our integration the following Friday.
Limitations, Parameters, Resources, and Materials
We were given 7 days to complete the integration of 4 new features into the app Spotify. The prompt and problem statement revolved around collaborations. Over the 7 days we conducted user research and synthesis, created personas, designed, iterated, tested and presented a final prototype. Our final prototype was built in hi fidelity using SKETCH and then integrated into InVision for testing purposes.
Initial Problem Statement
Spotify is a digital platform for music, podcasts, videos. Our problem statement stated that Spotify wants to expand the way users interactively share music.
USER RESEARCH
Spotify has hundreds features already which made our research evaluative in nature — we wanted to dive into how users interacted with the app and gain knowledge into their habits and preferences.
First, we developed a screener to find target candidates — and narrowed in on actual Spotify users. We learned most users also played music in other platforms — Apple Music, Pandora and Google Play, but most prefer Spotify because of its features.
We interviewed 6 users and focused on a range topics: Because the goal was to expand how people interact, we wanted to push beyond music specific questions and focused on how they collaborate with friends. A few examples of questions:
- If they use group chats
- How they share photos
- Other social media platforms they enjoy using “with friends”
- Favorite features within spotify
- We also asked if they attended concerts to gain insights into our Live Stream function
After gathering data from our research we synthesized using post-its and grouping information together.
Some of the key messages from synthesis are outlined below:
“I share music using screenshots and text messages.”
“I like to create playlists and have them saved, work offline, and browse through top charts.”
“Weekly discoveries and top charts help me to find new music.”
“Collaborating is EVENT specific.” i.e. bachelor parties
“I don’t rely on reviews to choose what kind of music I like.”
“Group chats are an easy way for me to communicate with more than one individual.”
PERSONAS
After synthesizing all information from user research, 2 distinct personas began to appear, however we found a common thread running through all the users:
- users listened daily
- users love social media
- appreciate apps with simplistic designs
When we dove deeper into music specific topics — more pronounced differences emerged. On the left we discovered a casual listener. On the right side is our passionate user who takes advantage of more features.
Meet Jacob – our power user. young professional living in Manhattan, when he shows up to a party he’s always the one to control the auxiliary cord. He’s passionate about music and loves having the best tracks. He considers himself a novice DJ — for events like bachelor parties. His pain points are not having a formalized way to share music. He still text messages screen shots of music he likes. Super low tech way to share and it means he is leaving the spotify app to share.
Meet Caitlin– our casual listener. Someone who likes new music but wants someone to curate playlists for her. Music ties into something deep inside her and she wants to share this experience with her friends. “i like to be in the know, but can someone do it for me?” Caitlin is still getting the hang of spotify — she doesn’t fully understand all the features but she loves other social media platforms.
We then refined our problem statement after clearly identifying our personas.
How might we incorporate sophisticated collaboration features in a simplistic way?
FEATURE PRIORITIZATION
Our next step was to prioritize features using the MoSCoW method.
SKETCHES
USER FLOW
Feature 1: Collaboration
Feature 2: Capturing Memories
Feature 3/4: Live Stream and sharing
USER TESTABILITY
SCENARIO 1: You and your friends are spending the weekend in the Hamptons and you all want to collaborate on a music ‘session’ for the weekend. You’ve already created a playlist called Hamptons Weekend.
TASK: Your first task is to add people to this playlist as either a listener or a DJ. Afterwards, navigate back to the playlist.
SCENARIO 2: You and your friends spent August 4–5 in the Miami. You were pretty much the DJ for the weekend and you completely forgot which songs you played. Your friends loved the music and they want you to share it with them.
TASK: Your next task is to use the calendar on the homepage and capture the memories from August 4–5th. Once a playlist is created with that history, share it with a friend via Spotify.
SCENARIO 3: Your favorite band is playing this weekend at Barclay’s — sadly you are out of town and won’t make it to the concert. Luckily spotify has a new feature for you to join the live stream and share it with your friends.
TASK A: Browse through the live stream to find the Little Dragon concert. Join the live stream and choose 2 friends (Alan & Alejandra) to share it with via spotify.
TASK B: After sharing the live stream with your friends, make sure to leave a rating on the show
RESULTING ITERATIONS
2 major changes:
RATE ‘button’ was not well received by the testers — they commented it was “shouting” and didn’t feel like a button. We decided to take out the word RATE and remove the following star ratings. These were then replaced by a simple thumbs up and down in keeping with existing Spotify icons. Our calendar wasn’t fully clickable so we cleaned up the design and made each of the date numbers linked to create a playlist.
We went back to the white board to sketch out our final draft of key screens that needed to be built to execute the integration:
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Our final prototype incorporated a consistent set of UI parameters — detailed below.
KEY FINDINGS
Usability Testing Quotes:
Collaboration feature: “I like being able to regulate people I collaborate with”
Seamless integration: “I couldn’t tell the difference”
“Navigation is easy, I would definitely use this feature”
RECOMMENDATIONS
Simplification strategies; remove, organize, hide, displace
Consistent app experience upon opening — improve memorability
Instagram integration
Ability to “tag” — our users love to share
REFLECTION
Overall we realized Spotify is an incredibly complex application! Even our seasoned users were unaware of many features due to the fact that they were buried in places people rarely visit. Our goal was to create a simple yet effective experience that incorporated collaboration tools. We look forward to the next round of testing and iteration!