By Sara Chabot
February 2, 2022
With the advancement of audio streaming services in recent years, music has become readily accessible through our digital devices, such as smartphones where mobile applications are commonly used for ones music consumption.
Spotify is the largest audio streaming service in the world and is one of the most popular mobile applications used in the United States. Streaming services such as Spotify not only allows you to stream audio, but it has added unique features to enhance your experience of listening to music. Thus, the frequent updates and added functionalities implore examination for its current usability and design.
The primary users for Spotify were individuals who preferred listening to songs through “liked” songs either pinned on the home or library page.
As someone who uses Spotify daily, I noticed that “Your library” and “Home” page could be hard to navigate and could use better organization. For example, I noticed that whenever I tried to look up my playlists or artists that I listened to in the past three days, I needed to scroll far down to search them. I also noticed that unless you click on the category buttons on top to filter your search, you would have all of the categories (such as artists, playlists, albums, podcasts,)stacked in “Recently played” order. This is one of the few things that I noticed before conducting this User Research. Thus, how could we improve the navigation and visual design to find songs efficiently?
1. Out of three menu tabs, I learned that most participants went to "Your Library" or "Home" page. All users stated that they went straight to listen to their liked Songs or Playlists which are both located at the top of Your Library or Home page.
2. For the second question, 4 users answered that they did not find difficulties finding a liked song, playlists, or podcasts they may want to listen to. 1 user said she didn't know where the Liked songs were since she does not use the app often enough. 3 users mentioned how they go straight to their liked songs either on the home or library tab.
3. I found out that there were several issues users encountered when finding a song to listen to. Interestingly, users suggested new ways to search songs such as typing in the lyrics to look up a song or adding a function to look up another persons Liked songs.
4. For question 4, I asked if there were any features the users liked about the Library page. 3 users mentioned that they liked the interest tabs/categories on top of the page. The interest tabs/categories allow users to sort whichever artist, playlist, album, or podcast that they liked or recently played. One of them said, “When you go to liked songs and feel like listening to rap,you could play that and shuffle the rap songs you have.” 2 users mentioned that the “Recently played” features was their favorite. “Recently played” is a feature that allows Your Library page to be sorted in order of what was recently played by the user. Other features mentioned was, “pinning the songs” at the top of the Your library page or having "The options to change the look of the Library page by clicking the square icon on the top right."
5. Users gave a detailed response on how to improve the navigation of the Yours Library tab. As shown below, each user had specific ideas on how to improve the app which gave me a great insight upon designing the wireframe.
6. Similarly for this open-ended question, I found commonalities that 3 users expressed that the home tab was either busy, not aesthetically pleasing to look at, or not very useful to their needs. Other users expressed that the look of the page could be made more personalized in some way, such as being able to change the background color.
Pain point1: The formatting of “Your Library” page
Users expressed that the lists and scrolling could get tiring. Another user mentioned that playlists need to be able to be pinned more than 4 because she would otherwise need to scroll down to find it. Another user stated that the playlists can be easily added by swiping it to the right but cannot be deleted vice versa. Moreover, pinning the playlists was something that users did not know how to do. To solve that issue, one user suggested that starring the playlists would make it easier for people to understand how to favorite their playlists.
Pain point2: Personalizing the interface design
Many users suggested that the app needs to be more personalized. For example, some users stated that there could be a feature added to personalize the order of your playlists without the limitations of the “Sort by” features. Some suggested the option to change the background color of the app.
Pain point3: Navigating the “Home” page
Most users expressed how the home tab was too busy or irrelevant to what they were looking for. From the research, it was evident that many of them listened to their playlists, liked, or recently played songs located at the top of the home page, but didnt necessarily scroll down to check out other featured music.
For this User Research, I aimed to collect information on the library page which I was successfully able to gather insights to implement the changes that matches the users needs. Although users also gave me suggestions on how to improve the design of the other tabs, I will focus only on the library page due as that was my initial goal of this case study.
I wanted to show the current design of Your Library page and how to pin and unpin the playlists. As you can, see user flow1 allows you to pin the playlist on Your Library by swiping to the left and unpin it by swiping it to the right.
Step1: Go to Your Library page
Step2:choose your favorite playlist to pin
Step3:Swipe your playlist to the right
Your playlist is now pinned to the top
Step4:Swipe the pinned playlist to the right to unpin the playlist
From the feedback that I gathered from the users, I mapped out a wireframe and incorporated functions that best addressed the users needs.
I created a high fidelity prototype which implemented the users pain points about the "Your Library" page. As users mentioned that "lists and scrolling can get tiring," I categorized the liked songs, playlists, albums, artists, and podcasts and added a "see more" button underneath each category so that users can easily click on the categories without having to scroll down. Moreover, I added features to the seconday navigation page by adding a "starring" button instead of pinning the songs. This was also an idea suggested by one of the users, since most of them did not know how to remove their playlist. In this mockup version of Spotify, I also made it possible to "star" as much playlists/podcasts/artists/albums the user would like to, since users complained that only 4 things could be pinned on Your Library. Hopefully the starring button would make it easier for users to navigate the app and figure out how to remove their playlists.
Thank you so much for reviewing my App Flow Redesign case study on Spotify. This case study was conducted for the course SMAD 308: Interactive Design II at James Madison University. I hope Spotify will consider to implement the features similar to these in the near feature to improve its usabilty for the music lovers out there. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me by chabotsa@dukes.jmu.edu. - Sara Chabot