Apple Music Redesign: The Complete Desktop Experience.
A lot was said about Apple Music recently. I, myself posted an article on Medium.com about my take on Apple Music design. Most of us think that Apple’s new streaming service is immature, that it was designed in a hurry and should be improved. I’m sure we’ll see gradual improvements.
A few designers shared with us their visions of the service. They focused on UI and usability and fixed the biggest flaws of AM user experience. Is it enough? No, it isn’t.
Even after a complete interface overhaul Apple will be on the spot, where its main competitor, Spotify, was a year ago. Now it’s leaving the spot behind. Let me just mention services like Spotify Now and Running, the Swedish company wants to change the way people discover music, for the better. That said, it’s obvious that a simple UI redesign and minor improvements are not enough for Apple Music. The question is — what more?
This article is the first part of my side/fun project — redesigning the Apple Music Service. I want to explore how Apple can make its product better and integrate it more with its vast ecosystem of software and hardware. I’m not Apple, Spotify or Jay-Z so I’m basing my thoughts on my own experiences and expectations.
The Core Loop
In the beginning, we need to define the product purpose, the core idea of how a user can benefit from using it. Define the core loop. I’ve written it before. For me, using a music streaming service is a constant exploration, a never-ending process of discovery. When you discover something great, you don’t want to lose it, so you save it and when this great track is safe, saved in your library, you can listen to it as many times as you want. It’s the core loop of the perfect music streaming service (for me)!
Explore
Users continuously explore music library searching for a new music that suits their tastes. It should be easy. No matter how do they do this: by following their friends activity, listening to a radio, browsing curated playlists or checking their recommendations.
Save
Saving a song to user library should be the easiest thing in the world. One click, no drop-down menus, etc. A simple message, quick action. The same applies to playlists. Just drag a song to create a new playlist.
Listen (and hear)
The player, a core part of the service. It’s the best thing in Apple Music, but it could be improved when it comes to UI. It should be the easiest thing to pause music, start playing or check your queue.
Improvements
Apple Music needs improvements on two main levels. It needs new functionalities and user interface tweaks.
The most important change.
In his book “Don’t make me think” Steve Krug wrote, that clear and consistent navigation is the most important thing when it comes to user experience design.
The most important change that needs to be done is an improvement of the navigation. Possible choices need to be communicated in a clear manner. Naming should be easy to understand, and a user must always have the option to go back.
I’ve found a side-panel menu easier to use. It’s on the left side, before anything else. Placing it like this gives the navigation a sense of supremacy over the content. It also creates a nice space for a playlist. That way, they’re visible all the time.
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Personalisation
I’m in love with the concept of personalisation. In all the services personalisation goes only as far as proposed playlists. In my opinion, extending personalisation options will be great from a user perspective. I posted some work-in-progress designs of Apple music/iTunes on Behance and I got some nice feedback.
For example, some of my friends there loved the dark UI version but there were many that appreciated the light one. Why not give them a choice? Lights on (light), or lights off (dark). This concept can go even further.
We could give users opportunity to arrange their welcome screens the way that suits them the best.
Some of them would like to have Top Hits lists on the first screen, some would prefer to see recommended music or their friends activity. It’s so easy, and can add so much value.
New Ways of Discovering Music
Right now Apple Music is a very standard service. Yeah, they have these super-duper algorithms that serve you music similar to your taste, but it’s so 2010. From a company such as Apple, I’m demanding more.
I’d love to see how the whole ecosystem comes to play. How the data collected from my iWatch or iPhone translates into curated playlists created just for me.
Integration of Apple Music with Apple Watch or third party apps would be a killing feature.
Think that you don’t need to craft your running playlist manually. You don’t even need to hope that Spotify will determine your tempo right. It’s all here. Apple has the data and the hardware to measure it.
The Search
One of the most important components of my vision. I won’t dwell on the search field itself. One thing worth mentioning is that it’s a “smart search”. So, it’ll display results from your “Collection” as well as results from the service catalogue. That being said, I’d like to tell you more about the search results.
I’ve noticed one thing when using Spotify, Apple Music or Tidal. I love when search results are well arranged. Sorted into logical groups. When results for songs are separated from albums etc. It helps me to scan through the results quickly. I had just one problem: It looked like everyone has a problem pulling this concept off completely.
I love when search results are well arranged. Sorted into logical groups. It helps me to scan through the results quickly. I have just one problem — It looks like everyone have a problem with pulling this concept off completely.
The results are shown in a tiny(!) popup. There is no space for them to shine. I decided to change this and designed a more prominent experience.
As you can see above, search results occupied the most part of the app window. Now they’re readable and easy to scan through. Meanwhile the sidebar with main navigation and playlists is uncovered. Because of that you can just drag the song you’ve found onto the desired playlist. Nice and easy.
The Player
The player section gets a redesign. First of all it’s anchored to the bottom of the app window. Second — it got bigger, making itself easier to use. Every single function responsible for playback control is inside this one section.
There are also some new functionalities. Now you can easily add a song to favourites or your collection or loop it.
The fact that the player in iTunes had little functionality, bothered me. Because of that I decided to design a solution: by clicking on an artist name you can go to the artist page, with one click. The same goes to track or album name. I also decided to hide time values, showing only the progress bar. Seriously, when was the last time you checked that?
Every Artist is Different
Every single band or singer is different.
They provide different emotions and experience.
iTunes has this nice concept of colouring every artist’s page in a different colour, putting the artist’s photo on top. But it looks like designers at Apple don’t have the guts to pull it off.
I like to think about the exploration of the artist page as a journey through artist work.
The whole view is designed vertically. You follow the path, learning some things meanwhile. If they interest you, you can stop. You won’t get truckloads of unimportant information at the start.
The Radio
The Beats 1 radio is one of the most important selling points of Apple Music. It’s unique. It has great auditions, and great DJ’s. So it deserves a great interface to handle it.
I’ve decided to go clean here. Just the current audition, short information about previous shows and the schedule for the near future. Of course you can just click on the schedule header and go to the dedicated page with the complete list of shows.
But Beats 1 isn’t the only radio available. Below you have a list of the shows recommended for you. Or you can expand the view and browse through all of them using a search engine.
Beats 1 isn’t the only radio available through Apple Music. Other options also need some love.
The one functionality that is missing now is an option to check recently played tracks. From what I could gather, there’s probably no way of checking what was played some time ago in iTunes. I’ve fixed it by adding an option to preview recently played tracks in queue.
The currently played track is displayed in the player section with the audition name next to it. You can go to the currently played artist page with one click. Nice!
Your Collection
When you’re out there, exploring the awesome world of music you discover some tasty bits.
You don’t want to miss them, so you “bookmark” them. Your Collection is a place where you can search throughout your “bookmarks”. No need to swim in the ocean, you can find all of them here, in one place.
As you may have noticed, I’ve decided to change the name of this section. “Collection” felt better. After all you’re not downloading them, just bookmarking. They’re not separated from the whole service catalogue.
I’ve decided to go with a two-level vertical menu here. First, the main navigation panel, second the “selection panel”. The easiest and quickest way to search through your bookmarks. In the view below you have artists list here, but when you change the selection method you can get composers or albums.
In iTunes you have filter options drop down on the right but the filtered results on the left. I’ve decided to put everything in one place to make it more consistent.
The artists, albums, etc. are visible all the time, as lists, in this section of the app. When you choose your desired artist, you’ll see a list of the tracks you’ve saved. You can play one song, start a radio or go to the artist’s full profile.
Social Features
You can say what you like but for me Apple Music has no social features. Apple introduced Connect which was supposed to be the next groundbreaking social feature. It turns out it’s just another Facebook fan page. Meanwhile, there are no options to share your music, playlists or discoveries with your friends or the whole community. That should also be changed.
Improving “Your Music” Experience
This is a very small improvement to make, but it’s very important. Right now saving a song to your collection of favourite songs is a pain in the ass. Saving whole playlists is even worse. Meanwhile, you could do it in just one click.
Other Small Improvements
Beside all that I wrote above, Apple Music (or rather iTunes) needs major UI improvements. iTunes was meant as a music/video player at the start. Then a store comes in, and now a streaming service. In my article, I wrote about it in more detail. iTunes architecture isn’t good enough to handle all of these features. That’s why it should be redesigned — the whole app architecture and structure. In my designs, I tried to approach this problem separating individual sections more.
Contextual Menu
If you can click on something, then it also has a contextual menu available. Right click to get more options. The fact that the queue shows recently played tracks is also a nice addition.
Other Stuff
Last but not least I redesigned and structured some other stuff. I decided to show previously played tracks in the queue. I also made the design more consistent and decided to change the “Listen” section name to “Your Collection”. It felt more accurate.
Conclusion
That pretty much sums up this part of the project. Hope you liked it. I encourage you to share your thoughts here or to get in touch with me via Twitter. What’s to come? Next time we’ll touch upon social features and summarise the desktop app redesign part of the project.
Designed by Tom Koszyk at Hologram Studio
