Case Study: Spotify Share
Tracks with Friends
Helping music lovers connect
austin-distel/unsplash
The Users
Spotify’s user base skews young compared to competitors — 55% are under 34, and 56% of their users are male. Sharing music is not only second nature to this demographic, but it is considered an important aspect of social bonding.
The Goal
Identify Spotify users’ unmet needs in music sharing, either one-to-one or through social networks.
Methods and Roles Employed
Primary and Secondary Research, UX Design, UI Design, Prototyping, and Usability Testing
Phase 1:
Research
Competitive analysis and user interviews gave insight into Spotify customers’ needs and the overall industry itself. The research aim was to identify opportunities for improving Spotify’s social and sharing functions.
Competitive Analysis
Spotify shares the music streaming market space with several companies, splitting the revenue share of the market. We investigated the industry landscape and, specifically, framed Spotify’s position in the space. Spotify’s previous involvement with social networking was also examined. Finally, evaluating the social capabilities of other streaming music services and the differences in those discrete audiences was key to positioning the new Spotify features.
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User Interviews
One-on-one user interviews were conducted in two phases over the course of two weeks. The second interviews were influenced by insights gained from the first.
Phase 1 Interviews
During roughly 30-minute interviews, users described their histories of sharing music, even in the era of physical media. Participants elaborated on how they chose to subscribe to their preferred music streaming platform, and discussed their most recent experience sharing music.
Phase 2 Interviews
20-minute interviews were conducted based on the pain points and preferences revealed during Phase 1 interviews. We probed deeper into the emotional aspects of sharing music—selecting and sending it to others, as well as receiving music recommendations from friends.
Needs and Goals
Use music sharing as an excuse to get in touch/re-connect with someone, which sometimes leads to in-depth conversations.
Consider SMS messaging as one of their primary inboxes.
Some are compelled to listen to shared music as soon as they receive it. Others prefer to defer listening until a more convenient time.
Because it is possible a friend doesn’t use Spotify, participants noted instead they share YouTube links, because they’re universal.
Reciprocity and commenting on a suggestion are important emotional aspects in music sharing.
Pain Points
Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where the share functions are located.
Wish the Friend Feed was more useful.
Locating friends in the app is difficult.
There would be fewer barriers and less hassle if sharing was within the app.
Lose track of the SMS if they don’t listen right away, which is not always possible.
Have to leave Spotify to reply.
“There’s a better way to share than SMS, right?”
Phase 2:
Define
After the research phase, findings were synthesized into actionable data. Then we created a user flow to lay the groundwork for tests of the future designs.
Persona
A single persona representing the user was created from the research:
Brian is a writer in his mid-thirties and is an avid collector of music, in both physical and digital forms. He joined Spotify for the deep streaming library. Brian enjoys learning about new music by browsing friends’ playlists and having music shared with him. He and his friends often use music sharing as conversation starters.
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Empathy Map
The empathy map—a distillation of the goals and needs of customers like Brian—highlighted his desire to strengthen and maintain relationships through music sharing. Brian maintains his friends’ admiration through his taste in music, so it’s a significant motivator. He wishes there was a way to carry on long-form conversations around music that’s adjacent to the music itself.
Understanding Brian’s motivations would inform site features such as in-app messaging, large-format messages, recommendations, and inbox-style management of the user’s share history.
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Goals and Problem Statement
With a firm idea of who the user is, Brian’s goals were defined and a solvable problem was proposed. It was determined that what Brian Kelley wants is to expand his music library and deepen his music knowledge by communicating with friends who have similar tastes in music.
How might we help Brian create and sustain conversations about the music he shares with friends?
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User Flow
A test path was determined to align with the question above. To start, the user receives an SMS message from a friend with a music recommendation. The user was then tasked with replying with a song recommendation of their own.
Phase 3:
Design
With research completed and the problem framed, possible solutions were explored. Ideas to improve music sharing in Spotify were generated and refined to eliminate ambiguity and user frustration wherever possible.
Rapid Ideation, Storyboarding, and Wireframes
Concepts were developed using the “crazy 8s” method of rapid, high-volume ideation. A set of storyboards were then distilled from concept ideas. Finally wireframes were created according to reviewed and revised story boards.
Research showed that a few features were important to include:
Rather than allowing messages to be ephemeral, an Inbox with a chat history was included, to allow users to listen at their leisure.
A friend list, built with minimal effort. It’s currently hard to locate friends in Spotify.
Large-format presentation of the share, designed to intensify its emotional impact.
Song recommendations when replying to messages.
In the wireframe stage, it became clear that receiving a song via traditional messaging disappointed users who consider sharing music to be personal and intimate. A large-format panel was added to better display incoming messages, signaling their importance.
Step 1: Rapid Ideation
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Step 2: Storyboarding
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Step 3: Wireframes
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Mid-Fidelity Prototype Testing
With individual wireframes completed and a firm handle on user flow, InVision was then used to thread the wireframes together for user testing.
Key Findings
The Add a Song and Send buttons were confusing, and subsequently made more explicit.
The Inbox nav item was confusing, and subsequently renamed Share.
The Search sequence was simplified by eliminating one screen.
High-Fidelity Mockups
Wireframes were animated in Figma by the addition of color, album art and Spotify brand styles.
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Phase 4:
User Testing
The mockups were linked together into a high-fidelity prototype with a limited number of possible interactions. The “happy path” laid out in the User Flow was tested, and adjustments were made based on user feedback.
High-Fidelity Prototype Testing
Participants via video conference navigated the prototype with the following tasks: Read an incoming message, listen to the song from their friend, then reply with a music recommendation of their own. Participants shared their screen and talked through their thinking as they completed the task. After finishing, each participant retraced their steps and provided additional thoughts and observations, positive and negative feelings.
Key Findings
Users enjoyed the large message window, noting it felt more personal than just seeing a link in a text thread.
They missed the ability to like the song in the message window.
Confusion with the nav item “Share” was not completely resolved. But users felt they would remember Share after the first use.
Users expected that clicking the Close button would dismiss messaging altogether and take them back to whatever they were doing.
Conclusion:
Reflection
Music as its own symbolic language helps us connect with friends and loved ones. Music also offers the opportunity to explore relationships with new friends—generations of young people making and sharing mixtapes with school friends, or in the hope of romance, are proof-positive.
It’s not surprising to find out that users were interested to utilize music sharing as the medium for long-form conversations. Many of us have done the same.
It was daunting at first, delving into an existing product’s design system in an effort to improve it. Luckily, a product as mature and sprawling as Spotify has a large number of established patterns that can be easily repurposed.
