Spotify a Retrospective
UX Design Conceptual Project 2 Spotify
Project Timeline: 07/05/17–07/20/17
15 Min Project Presentation: 07/21/17
Daniel Ek the CEO of Spotify has this to say, “With Spotify, people don’t get it until they try it, and then they tell their friends”
As a UX designer tasked to work on a project for Spotify these words resonated with me. While my interactions with this music platform, to date, were very primal (being on the freemium level) I had to become a subscriber to dig deeper to uncover all the existing features currently available at a subscription level for Spotify Users vs free, if I was to progress any further into my project.
I found that Spotify’s Business Model and missions all drive towards constantly looking for innovative ways to engage their customers at various levels.
The area of opportunity that I was tasked to explore was to allow existing Spotify users, to, in real time, be able to capture and collaborate live DJ sets and to enable those users to join rooms to listen and interact with live DJ sets.
We were three random UX designers assigned to work together on this project to deliver a MVP that solved this user experience. With that in mind, we were assigned two and a half weeks to deliver a working MVP in a 15 minute presentation together with research findings in the form of comparative analysis, user screener surveys and interviews, to then synthesize that data into a valid Problem Statement which is music lovers need a way to be actively engaged because they seek the thrill of being part of a community.
This would see us into our design stage where we would craft user flows charts and begin a ‘happy path’ for our user personas that we crafted. Once our user flows were set up, we would begin lo fi sketches to make sense of the navigation we were setting up for our users. By navigation I mean the call to action functions on the screens, together with information and its hierarchy. What new screens were we to redesign from scratch? What were the call out features and where would they live?
As you know we are working within the Spotify paradigm and they already have a seamless navigation structure and brand guides for visuals set in place. This can be very challenging as we have to make sure all our designs aligned within this parameter.
Group Dynamics:
So we three designers set to work. As UX designers we would adapt the Double Diamond Methodology through the course of our project. Our first order of business was to set up a group dynamic. We had a meet and greet to understand our working styles and establish our strengths. We needed to assign a project manager who would keep track of the stages and make sure we were all aligning and accountable though all the stages. I volunteered as I wanted to experience the challenges and pitfalls that came with this role. So I created a project plan on excel and set up the daily tasks we would require to completion. I also made sure that at the beginning of each day we would have a ‘stand up’ meeting and end with one as well. That way any road blocks one was facing, could be addressed immediately. I learnt a lot from this role, soft skills and most importantly professionalism and how to communicate ideas effectively via email, slack, text phone or in person. My challenge was that I would like to learn more project management tools to keep organized with tasks and time, and collaborate with others. As far as the project itself, the other two designers were regular Spotify users, so it was interesting to mix my level of use and new discovery with their existing level of expertise while researching and designing and troubleshooting for our project. It gave us a healthy mix of user experience.
Feel free to click on the links below to view Video step by step guide through a ‘happy path’ task and In vision interactive all screens designed to support our MVP prototype.
Click here to view prototype MVP
Research:
We began researching into Spotify’s business model, whats the company all about? what are its core values? and what makes its users keep coming back for more?
We listed out all the competitors for Spotify, based on music platforms, specialized content and features that other companies had in tandem to the ‘Live Option’ we were researching. we narrowed down our area of focus to Apple music as a one stop shop platform, We Funk Radio and Sound Cloud as specialized music where users can listen in live mode radio feature to live sessions by artist musicians on We Funk and in Sound Cloud user musicians can upload their music to share and collaborate with others. Then we also came across a few Apps that allow sharing music options, playing and commenting on live video. Flow is an App for sharing. Twitched is an App for gamers but their element of live video that users can upload their video and can comment on in real time was exactly the type of technology we were looking at in our assigned task. We also looked at Facebook live and how their conversion rates for users increased drastically once in live mode and commenting.
Once we determined what exactly it is we are looking for in our users, we went out in the field and set up an email screener survey on Type Form to screen participants for a further in-depth interview that we wanted to conduct. We set up screener survey questions to ask and discussion guides for our interviews to gather data needed to understand our user trends. For the direction of our project we required regular users of Spotify to participate. Their familiar user patterns and trends allowed us to understand the benefit and trends of this new feature being added. i.e. users would be able to share music with their friends in a live setting for example at a party, so collaboration among friends is a priority, that most people felt, as they said they usually share music with friends but their friends have such diverse taste in music so they sometimes don’t know where to turn. This feature would connect them to like minded people and in the process enforce new friendships and connections.

We synthesized all this data and created our problem statement and crafted our personas to address this issue.
Problem statement: Music lovers need a way to be actively engaged because they seek the thrill of being part of a community
For this project two distinct personas emerged. A primary persona Sally who is the active engager and is able to host her own live sets and allow others to collaborate on them, while the secondary persona Ted is the lone listener who likes to search, browse and add new music and to be able to listen into what others are playing in real time as well.


Design:
Users would now experience unexpected new music and find effective ways to share music socially. We created a feature that allows users in real time to: listen, collaborate, play and comment. Because users are so familiar with Spotify’s interface, we did not want to disrupt them by majorly changing the functionality and navigation of the app. so we worked within the Spotify brand guidelines to integrate a seamless look and feel.


With our user flows ready we began sketching lo fi screens to explore what we are dubbing this new feature as “live sets.” We ended up designing ‘happy paths’ for Ted and Sally both. The challenge is that we began by sketching only those screens in lo fi that introduced the new feature. So we user tested in paper prototype two screens, the live set listen mode and commenting on that live set.

Then we built out based on the feedback we got. We created wireframes on sketch and tested on three users in a lab test setting.

Those results really got us to think more about the path this feature is to take on in the future in term of its scope. As per our user tests they were able to complete the ‘happy path’ task and some minor changes were made to iterate screens in live mode and browse.

Next Steps:

- Further Testing and Iteration — to see how users utilize the new “add” feature in the “Featured Live Sets” screen, accommodate Multiple Paths To Creating Live Sets; Ensure all types of Spotify users who use the app differently are able to find and use this feature.
- Social Interaction Increase — ’Like’ live set and respond in chat with music-centric emojis/GIFs/sound bites

Deliver:
Once we had all our deliverables ready we had to assimilate and put together a cohesive presentation. We were given 15 minutes to present our take on this new feature. Putting together a clear concise slide presentation from so much data was not only challenging but mind boggling. What do we include, what do we leave out. This is something that I feel with practice and several sprints in project delivery that I will get a better sense of and accomplish better iterations as I go.
