Does Spotify neglect the needs of the expanding customer base?

UX case study

Probably the most famous music streaming platform with 248 million monthly active users, of whom 72% are millennials.

A millennium streaming platform without any way to separate the children’s music from the parents one.

In the USA alone, more than 50% of millennials are becoming parents, and the group is expanding.
Spotify's users spend more than 2 hours a day streaming music.

However, Spotify does not offer any solutions for young millennial parents.

I conducted user research to see if real people need this solution.

1. Most used apps for the children content are YouTube (100%), Netflix (25%) and Spotify (25%).
2. YouTube and Netflix do offer the separation between the kids and personal content for parents.
3. 89% of respondents wanted a separation between 2 types of content.
4. Respondents felt very confident (score 72 out of 100) that the children content significantly affect their in-app recommendations.
5. Parents wanted an easy way to switch between their time with a child and personal time.
6. Respondents felt that playlists are not an option, as some kids content is hard to save (the children plays already a playlist) and still affects their suggestions.

User persona

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

“I want to have “me time” without child’s music.”

30 years old recently a parent of a 2 year old toddler.

⠀
Wants

1. his child to be entertained
2. his child to be bilingual

Loves

Running

Hates
When in the middle of the run child’s songs start playing.

Problem statement

⠀
User needs a way to separate the kids content from his personal content because it is affecting the user’s in-app recommendations.

Hypothesis

I believe that by creating simple in-app switch between 2 accounts we can separate content and I will know it is valid if the user will not see any children’s songs in his suggestions.

Solution

Separate account — Create a separate account for kids

Simple switch — Make a switch between accounts easy

Personal space — Prevent a child from switching back to parents account

Low-fi and testing

Low — fi wireframes

In the first iteration of the feature, I put this option into the library, where all the music is saved, I felt this is a very logical place for the button to be.

BUT after testing, I moved it to the settings, as this was more logical for the users.

User flow

User task: to add the music to the kids account and switch to the Spotify Kids

Hi-fi prototype

Some screens of the solution integrated into the standard user flow of the Spotify users.

Switching between accounts

The prototype of the user flow located above. It also includes the ability to save the songs to the Spotify Kids account from your personal account. This will allow the user to easily save music straight to the separate account without switching.

Prototype

Next steps:

• Develop the solution to integrate more of the kids content into an app
• Create the same feature for an Android app

Update (07/03/2020)

Spotify recently released the Kids version of the app, that verify my user research and assumptions of user need to separate accounts.

From Apple Store

However, as of the user reviews on the app store, the app has limited functionality and users would prefer to have a separation within the one app instead of having a separate one.

Real customers reviews from Apple Store

Want to learn more?

If you’d like to become an expert in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic, then consider to take an online UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Good luck on your learning journey!