Popular Music App Redesign
A new app designed based on the voice of the people. The unnamed app was designed with three others in a design class at UC San Diego. Currently it is only a prototype of the playlists section of a music app. For a month, my team and I conducted user research to really understand the voice of the people. Then we looked at existing apps such as Apple Music, Spotify, or Google Play to see what they were doing right, but more importantly what they were doing wrong. Learning from them we made an app that emphasized clarity of information and user control.
User Research
The idea was to learn as much about people when they listen to playlists, make them, add to them, everything about them. Some of our questions we asked include:
- How many apps do you use for listening to music, what are they?
- When do you usually listen to music, does it differ by app?
- Do you create your own playlists from scratch or do you prefer using/modifying existing ones?
- How do you find new music?
- What were the last couple playlists you made for?
Following our user research we starting to compare the pros and cons of existing apps. On a whole our team found many comparisons between Apple Music and Spotify, usually with Spotify being the bad one and lacking functionality or clarity.
However, I did find one example where Spotify was in the right. The way new releases are displayed in Google Play is horribly displayed for users who are not familiar with the artist. Only the names of the artist and their new single or album are displayed. Without familiarity with the artist, it is impossible for users to actually know if it is a new single or album. Spotify makes it very clear with a “Singles” label in the corner.
The Problems
- People couldn’t add certain playlists made by Spotify.
- Spotify’s playlist creation button is at the bottom of the page and only makes a new list without the immediate option to add music into it.
- Apple Music has no visual distinction between followed playlists and personal ones.
Overall our user research pointed towards a few things. Firstly, Apple Music and Spotify were widely used and the most frequently used apps. Secondly, that people make playlists a lot, almost anything new they see they make into a playlist. Though the latter can be partially attributed to how both work on a purchasing model and limits user control and freedom.
Prototype Redesign
Our redesign had two things in mind, freedom and clarity. Anything we or the users felt was confusing or restricted in actions. Two of the team members lead the way for implementation on sketch and invision as they had the most experience while the myself and the last member were in charge of design rational and testing the prototype.
The playlist tab was aesthetically modeled after apple for simplicity sake of a prototype, in terms of issues addressed it would be closer to a redesign of Spotify. While it may appear similar to Apple Music, the buttons and layout are completely different. Firstly, it is horizontal segmentation of playlist types. We wanted it to be clear where you can find your followed and personal playlists and differentiate between the two. Additionally, we added a new section to the playlist tab that acts as music discovery. Since we wanted the functionality to add any type of playlists to our library, we put that right at the top of the tab for maximum discoverability. This also does not at all effect the previous “My Playlists” section as that is still placed within the fold. The playlists one would discover are usually of the type that Spotify generates under a theme like studying or working out, but don’t allow addition to playlists. At the bottom one would find a recently played list, something we added to address the scenario were a user has a very long playlist list and has difficulty finding their playlist. While not entirely solving the issue, it does a secondary avenue for users to quickly find their recent playlists, an option Apple Music does not have in their playlist list. Which leads to our next change, dynamic sorting of playlists.
The Apple Music playlist sort function is quite underwhelming with only three options, without even a most played sort. Which is why in our endeavor to grant user control we gave them a custom sort option to allow users to freely position all of their playlists. If they choose to rely on the standard alphabetical sort it is still present, but perhaps physically moving the list will provide a stronger mental memory of where items are, like knowing where everything is in your messy room because its your mess.
Other minor things we put in included the option to add a playlist to another playlist. This was just one of our many decisions that followed our creed of letting users add anything into a playlist.
The Hard One
This was an interesting project that allowed me to really focus on user based design, but it was not without difficulties. The rational for our decisions were purely based on one round of interviews and our own app comparisons. As a result our members all had varying opinions on what was relevant to change and how drastically. The debate for putting music discovery within the playlist tab was particularly difficult, probably the hardest. At first some of us couldn’t understand the need for to it to be there, it didn’t match with the standards for playlists. However, we ultimately decided that while it may be different, it has its advantages in advertising for itself at the top of a tab and intuitive grouping with other playlist items.
Reflection
There was a lot of firsts for me in this project and hopefully some lasts. Balancing the work load for this project and the two other projects at the time was surprisingly difficult, it actually made me wish the app I had developed previously was real so that it could collect the various chat groups and be a road map for my work. There were times when I could not get in contact with my group and I do hope that in future projects that communication can be retained at all times. It was the first time I did a user based design. It was only during the interviews that I could feel that what I am trying to learn about and make were for people, I would change up the questions, adapt and redo. I feel it has helped me experience first hand what kind of work I can expect in the future.