Spotify Desktop App, User experience
Introduction
Today, people are looking for applications according to their needs. But with so many on the market, how can we effectively attract new potential users and retain them so they don’t switch from our application. The answer … generating good user experiences
Overview
Spotify is a Swedish-American multi platform application, used to play music via streaming. It has a "premium" business model, a basic free service and with advertising; but with additional features, with better audio quality, through a paid subscription. It allows listening in «radio mode», searching by artist, album or playlists created by the users themselves. Since its creation, this platform has revolutionized the music market, allowing the emergence of new artists, new musical dynamics and currently with the help of Machine Learning, it is able to adapt the music that a user presents according to their needs.
Problem Statement
Why did this project need to happen?
This type of project is necessary, because an application nowadays should not simply "work". It must go further due to the high supply of applications. And a way to give more value to a product, in this case an application. It is by achieving engagement with the user, that he becomes a fan of the application. This is achieved by performing UX analysis, gathering points where the user presents emotions regarding the use of an applicationWhy was the goal or desired outcome?
The purpose of this type of project is to find those points that generate frustration in users and find a way to solve them while maintaining the essential functionality of the application and not generating new discomforts in users.
The goal: Improve the user experience.
User & Audience
Who was the user?The user can be differentiated into various archetypes.
The most common is a young person, who uses digital applications to a large extent, not necessarily music, such as food delivery, online shopping among others.
On the other hand, emerging archetypes are presented, which are older people who are making the transition between using traditional music media, such as radio, television, CD, USB, to migrating to applications that contain musical variety.
But in this analysis we are going to focus on Regina, she is a woman who fits within the second archetype. She is 68 years old and started exploring the app thanks to the help of her grandson.
The interesting thing about this case is that Regina has a very exquisite taste in music.
Since she is not a simple music user. She was for many years a music student, so much so that she became an Opera Singer.
Those who have set foot in the water in the world of music know that the people who have studied in this field, in addition to having a great knowledge of sheet music grammar and other analytical knowledge, have excellent hearing and are very demanding when it comes to music.
In addition to this, it comes from traditional forms of music reproduction, like the ones I mentioned above. And technology is a bit far from his way of seeing the world. But she is open to learning how to use it even though she is not an expert in this area.
Roles & Responsibilities
In this project I assumed the role of putting myself in the shoes of a designer, focused on finding those pain points of the user.
And this means becoming Regina, understanding how she thinks, trying to feel her pain as if it were my own. This allows you to come up with a solution that Regina really likes.Scope & Constraints
Although there are no existing constrains regarding budget, the time can be one. Since it would be helpful to have time to find people who have the Regina archetype and put the proposed solution to the test.Other thing, is I am a regular user of Spotify. For that reason, understanding the pains of the other person is more difficult because I can skip certain steps that for me may not be conflictive, but for my user archetype it is. And I can ignore them without realizing it. That means paying a lot of attention to detail.
Process & What You Did
What happened
set-by-step run down.
- The challenge/problem
- Research and discoveries notes
- Sketches
- Information Architecture
- Wireframes
- The solutionTo understand Regina, I had to act like her and think like her. But how to do it without being friends with Regina or even knowing her.
I did it through a journey map. This tool that comes from Design Thinking allows one to understand how the user navigates the application, how the user thinks and what emotion each interaction generates, which are divided into phases.
As can be seen, she takes a series of consecutive steps to listen to the music that she wants to hear.
What happened
At first I click on Liked Song Options
And the I scroll in my Liked Songs List, my list are not to Big, but I can believe Regina’s list is much longer, for that Reason she gets Annoyed. The she gets up with that and looking for Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest Russian composers of classic music [ballet music]. But she meets with…
Ok, for me personally it would be fine, I would simply choose an album by the artist and start listening to the songs related to that album. But let’s remember that Regina is picky and she specifically wants the ones she selected as she liked. And clearly this generated confusion for her. Then she realizes that there is a filter option which she uses.
At this point, Regina is very happy because she was able to listen to a song of her choice from her favorite artist.
But when the song ends, suddenly a Jazz song plays. And remember that Regina has exquisite tastes. She doesn’t want classical music to be mixed with Jazz, this really bothered her. Despite the fact that she really likes the both genres. But Spotify is going to auto-play the songs on Liked Songs, regardless of their genre.
Another point that bothers her too much is that now she feels that she cannot classify her music by year and by genre.
What happened: challenge/problem
From this we can summarize the key points
- She doesn’t like the form that she have to use for looking a song of specific artist.(First scrolling and then the searching bar that confuses her.)
- She does not like that way is reproduce all the songs of the Liked list. She just like classic in this case.
- She does not found how to classify her liked song by genre or album year.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Regina wants to build up a permanent library of saved song, with easy classification control and filter because sorting through their "Liked Songs" is time consuming high effort and frustrating.What happened: Research and discoveries notes
- Regina does not know the option of create New Playlist, she can categorized the songs as she wants. But this way is not so simple, like putting a heart in the songs that she likes.
- She is frustrated as she cannot find a quick-access search engine that can help her find Tchaikovsky, which shows that a more friendly interface must be displayed.
- In my application, I don’t know if they already adjusted from spotify or another option, since for this analysis I used a premium account. By writing “Tchaikovsky” in the filter. Only songs that contain that name sound either in the title or in the author of the song.
- She gets frustrated because the song from Tchaikovsky [Classic] is changed to one by Nina Simone [Jazz] for instance. This means that in the Journey Map Regina does not have the option to reproduce just Tchaikovsky songs or another classical songs. Or she doesn’t just listen Tchaikovsky music.
- She wants a way to classify from Liked Song.Without meaninglessly pressing each title, without any result.
What happened: Sketches
The sketch process is like a brainstorming captured in drawings I initially made, sketches of the points of the interface that showed to be conflictive for Regina
Arriving at this sketch, which collects all the additional ideas for the solution of Regina’s discomforts.
What happened: Information Architecture
Here is the AI of the proposal.
What happened: Wireframes
Below are the wireframes are a design of the solution:
The first shows the Spotify Home page, there we do not change.
In the next one you enter the option Liked Songs. At this point the filter bar is highlighted, to allow a quick search and additionally an Advanced button is shown, so that the user can perform advanced filtering. Also,
A + symbol was added to indicate that the song is added to or added to … in this case, added to playlist.
The info icon is for satisfy a curiosity of a song. Giving info of what genre or sub genre has the song and even year of release.
By clicking on the “Advanced “button, a menu is displayed where it is possible to classify the songs by genre, year of release, and if the songs belong to a Playlist, they can also be classified by this.
To add a song to a list, the user can click on the + symbol, to which a menu is displayed indicating that a new list can be created or it can be added to an existing one. This one is to give a Regina a classification system that she can control and found easily.
This creation screen is dominant so that the user can see that he is creating a new list. In this case Regina creates a list of her favorite classic song
As a new feature, the name of the list to which the song belongs appears when clicking on it. Regina can navigate to her classical music list.
What happened: The solution
Below is the solution based on the last wireframes. Here we can appreciate that I modified some features after a user test with a person external to the project. Like the fact that the information icon was removed because it was never opened.
Here is the advanced filter. This is added in such a way that it does not disturb users who do not require these advanced filters. It can filter by genre, year of release and a Playlist.
Now to offer a higher classification of songs. I give a easy route to Regina to go from Liked Songs to PlayList. This is done with the + symbol, which is easily associated with add. With this button it is possible to add, but also create a new list.
The user has created the list. Now, by pressing the + symbol again, it shows that the Regina Classic Son list exists, so it is possible to add it
To check that it was added, the list is displayed on the screen, next to the liked song. It is possible to access the list and view that song.
Finally the song join the Regina Classic Songs List. This process allows Regina to easily classify her favorite songs by genre or by the pattern that she wants to decide.
Conclusion
Outcomes and Results
This project allowed me to know that the UX, more than any extravagant technique. The key, is to get into the shoes of the person, trying to contextualize with their world and the way they see it. What the user like and what bothers her/him.How this process comes from the world of Design Thinking.It is very important to test the prototype and review the feedback as many times as necessary. This is also part of the lean methodology. These allow an optimal result to be obtained in the long run that increases the value of the product / serviceWhen facing the prototype one realizes that certain key adjustments are needed, which improve the user experience
