Spotify Redesign

Role: Product Research & Designer, Interface Designer
Duration: September - October 2021
Scope: User Research, Interface Design

Friends Activity & In-App Chat Implementation

The current social interactivity features on Spotify are not as intuitive as they could be, and this has led to inefficiencies in sharing songs between users. Additionally, the mobile app version lacks the development seen in the desktop functions, particularly with regard to the display of a user's friends' activity.

To address these issues, my team and I have proposed a redesign that includes several key changes: song-sharing, friend activity, and chat.

About

The current Spotify mobile app faces several challenges that hinder social interactivity and song-sharing. These challenges include:

  1. Limited focus on social interactivity and song-sharing: Spotify's current features and functionality don't prioritize social interaction and song-sharing.

  2. No in-app song-sharing: The current version of the app only allows for music sharing through external apps, which is not the most intuitive or efficient user experience.

  3. Inefficient and cluttered song-sharing user flow: Sharing a song on the mobile app involves multiple steps and redirecting screens, making the process cumbersome and confusing.

  4. Lack of Friend Activity on mobile: The Friend Activity column, which allows users to see what their friends are listening to, is only available on the desktop version of the app, limiting the social and interactive experience on mobile.

To address these challenges, improvements can be made to increase the focus on social interactivity and streamline the song-sharing process. For example, an integrated messaging system within the app can be added to enable easier and more efficient sharing of songs between users. Additionally, the Friend Activity feature could be added to the mobile app to provide a more interactive and engaging user experience.

Overall, by addressing these challenges, Spotify can improve the social interactivity and song-sharing capabilities of its mobile app, making it a more enjoyable and user-friendly experience for its users.

Company Research & Challenge

Competitive Analysis

The following list showcases the currently existing streaming and music service platforms in the worldwide market (including Spotify) and the user base ration that they have:

NetEase Music is a major music platform and streaming service in China, which offers a unique in-app song-sharing and chat feature. This feature enables users to share songs with their friends and communities, while also providing artists with a platform to connect with their fans and share updates about their music.

With this feature, users can easily share their favorite songs with others, create custom playlists, and engage in real-time chats with friends and other users. In addition, the platform provides artists with a way to reach out to their followers in a more casual and interactive way. This enables them to promote their music, share updates about upcoming concerts and events, and even receive feedback from fans.

Overall, NetEase Music's in-app song-sharing and chat feature is a powerful tool that fosters greater social interaction and engagement between users and artists alike. By providing a more personalized and interactive user experience, the platform has become a leading destination for music lovers and artists in China.

User Research & Interview

When conducting user research, we wanted to understand the user pattern of active Spotify users, and how they feel towards the song-sharing feature. The following is a list of questions that we asked: 

  • When you’re on Spotify, what is one issue that stands out for you in regard to song sharing?

  • If a messaging feature is available, what would you use it more for – sharing songs or chatting?

  • Would you prefer to have a more intuitive sharing feature or fewer re-directing screens?

  • When it comes to song-sharing, what is something good that Spotify is doing?

  • How often do you find yourself wanting to share songs with friends/family?

  • How would you feel about having a DM with a verified artist you follow, getting to message them directly, and getting updates from them through the chat?

  • Do you use the desktop app?

  • Do you notice/pay attention to the friend activity column?

After gathering the questions from the questionnaire, we concluded our findings below and created a user persona based on the findings:

  • Most users noted that currently, Spotify isn't very user-friendly or efficient when it comes to song-sharing

  • People also voiced their disappointment that the 'friend activity' column is only available on desktop

  • 100% said they would use the messaging feature to share songs more than for regular chatting

  • 83% said they would prefer to have an in-app song-sharing feature and fewer redirecting screens

  • People enjoy the Instagram story-sharing feature and some also appreciate the QR code system

  • Most said that they often wish to share songs with friends and family, but many find the current interface to not be intuitive enough for it

  • 67% are in favor of having DM's and updates from their favorite artists, while others want promotional benefits from it

  • 100% said they use the desktop app at least sometimes

  • 33% said they pay attention to the friend activity column

Wireframe Development

Initial Sketches

For the initial low-fi sketches, we sketched out how the song-sharing and friends activity features would look without changing the currently existing interfaces too much, in order to maintain the in-app user pattern as much as possible. 

Friends Activities

The friend’s activity section allows users to look at what their friends are listening to while using the mobile app. It appears on the top of the home page of the mobile app. Since a large group of Spotify users tend to add songs from other people’s or Spotify’s recommended playlists, this could be a passive method of sharing songs with other users, as well as allowing users to expand their playlists.

By implementing the friend’s activity section into the Home section, users are able to have quick access to the feature without extra commands or buttons. When they tap open the circle, they would be able to see the short animated video of the song, the name of the song and artist, and the option to save or share the song. 

In-App Chat System & Song Sharing

For the chat system, we created an extra section since is one of the major features. Users are able to send and receive messages from their friends, artists they follow, and the music communities they belong to. We also redesigned the search section to highlight that users could look up other accounts, as the current account searching feature is not as visible. 

For the song-sharing feature, we designed the layouts for interfaces of sharing songs from a friend’s activity (left) and normal song-sharing (right). Since there is an in-app chat system implemented in the design, I designed the layouts in the sharing page to have three rows: for in-app chats, copy links and other commands, and sharing to a third-party platform.