Beatdrop
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read
Want to meet new people who dig your jam? Download our new app Beatdrop.

This is our project for the event Design 360, Esya 2017 at IIIT Delhi. @des360
Beatdrop is the first music browser-cum-social search app that combines the fun of listening to your favorite music with getting the chance of meeting people with similar musical interests.
Survey
- Result 1: Out of the 147 people that we surveyed, 32% spend 10 hours a week and the average person spends about an hour a day listening to music. On a scale from 1 to 5, the average person rated 3.34 as the likelihood of them using a social search app for music.
Inference 1: Since there are no apps in the market that currently meet this unique demand of music browsing and social search simultaneously, we decide that this is a feasible venture to work on. - Result 2: 97% of the people surveyed prefer to use Facebook or Google to sign in to mobile apps.
Inference 2: Apart from giving the users the option of signing up, there would be options for signing in via Google and Facebook to make our app more user-friendly.

- Result 3: 71% of the people surveyed like to analyze their own and other people’s musical interests. 75% said ‘No’ to listening to any one fixed genre of music.
Inference 3: A person’s musical interests comprise of different levels of affinity for multiple genres. For an effective analysis of the same, we have introduced a new feature — the Pulse graph.
This graph would be populated at the time of signing up by using a small form indicating current musical interests, and it would later be auto-updated as and when songs are played and liked.
This graph is accessible at the Profile page of the user, and is used at the time of browsing, to recommend users having a similar graph.
A custom search feature enables the user to plot a graph and search for people with musical interests closest to it.


- Result 4: Surprisingly, 84% people would be open to listening to lesser known artists as well. And 63% said that they would like to share their mood with their friends with a song.
Inference 4: In light of these responses, Beatdrop enables the users to upload their own songs. It also contains a ‘Mood’ feature in which users can select a 10 second clipping of a song as the mood for the day.
Moods of other people friended on the app would be shown as circular icons on the top of the Feed tab.

- Result 5: 76% of the people surveyed said ‘Yes’ to attending musical events nearby. A significant majority i.e. 82% also expressed the desire for activity based music playlists.
Inference 5: The Browse page, apart from containing album and song suggestions, would also contain Event suggestions on the basis of proximity and musical interests.
It would also contain a section recommending playlists for specific activities like workouts, jogging etc.
Keeping the users hooked
The Hooked model of behavior design by Nir Eyal consists of 4 key points:
- Trigger: Internal (boredom, loneliness) and external (notification, email).
As per the results of our survey, there is no need to stimulate internal triggers for listening to music.
However, external triggers like witty personalized Push Notifications and regular event emails would act as compelling, habit forming triggers. - Action: Accomplishing something with the app is a limited number of taps away.
Encouraging action by:
a. Fresh In-App Content by way of New and Trending songs.
b. Quality UI/UX
c. Monitoring dominant actions and simplification thereon. - Variable Reward: Satisfy their need and leave them wanting more:
a. Never ending Feed
b. Addictive one-touch scrolling through Mood statuses of friends
c. Rewarding personalized Pulse graph
d. The rush of matching people with the same interests. - Investment: Create an environment where users can take specific actions to invest in a better and more personalized experience:
a. Playlists
b. Moods
c. Uploads
d. Search people by specific musical interests.
e. Search people by Waveform ID.
