Like most college students, much of my life is accompanied by a soundtrack: whether that’s hanging out with friends, traveling, or simply walking to class. With music playing 24/7, it’s easy to get tired of certain songs and playlists. That’s when the quest to find new music begins: while Spotify’s algorithm generates personalized playlists, I rarely add these songs to my playlist. Texting my friends, although requiring the most effort, always yields the best results — new music that I actually like.

Talking about music is more than simply a way to find new jams — it’s a continuous conversation point that makes me feel intimately connected with my friends even when we aren’t together, because of how personal songs can be. For Gen Z, who grew up using music streaming services, music is the heartbeat of our lives — certain songs remind us of glimmering memories, and most importantly, the people who make those memories shine so bright.

STEP 1: Diagnosing the Problem

Music is a method of connection, and while apps like Spotify allow you to follow friends on the app, passively sorting through their playlists is our only way to interact with their account. When listening to music, people want to be able to connect with their close friends, so that they can find new music through them and interact with them digitally in a very personal manner. People currently can’t do that well because

1. They can’t see when their friends are listening to music on the app.

2. It requires a lot of effort to access their friends’ accounts on the mobile app (they either have to look them up by name or press 5 buttons to navigate to their profile).

3. They cannot communicate with their friends through the app (they have to leave the app which requires much more effort and can seem unnatural).

STEP 2: Researching the Problem

To pinpoint the exact issue users face when it comes to interacting with friends on Spotify, I interviewed several Spotify users — namely, Abigail Boatmun, Nicole Silberberg, Vanessa Rivera, and Neha Blair. I chose each user for their different use of and level of experience with the app to bring diverse perspectives to my research. After interviewing my users, I discovered the following:

1. Users love finding new music through friends, but find it difficult to do so because it is an effortful and unnatural process. Users usually have to switch apps to text their friends, sometimes use Shazam, and then type in song names one by one.

2. Users want music sharing to be more casual. Many users are self-conscious about sharing their favorite songs because music can be very personal. Currently, sharing music only feels natural to users when it comes up in person, which is usually not when users are looking for new music.

3. We love talking music with our friends — most users indicated that they talk to someone about music at least once, daily.

STEP 4: Design Implementation

Low Fidelity Sketches

The following images illustrate how I anticipated integrating these new features into Spotify’s existing information hierarchy.

 At this point, I decided to exclude feature 2 from the final design, due to it having low feasibility and impact if it is released at the same time as the suggesting songs feature. Users first need to become comfortable suggesting songs to friends, and Spotify could develop feature 2 (a points system to reward users for good suggestions) to bolster engagement with suggesting songs after. I also decided to eliminate feature 2 because from a business perspective it is unclear what rewards are plausible to give to users — for example, a month of premium for free or badges for certain achievements? Determining this is beyond the scope of this project as an individual designer.

Medium Fidelity Mockups:

While I ultimately designed 5 flows, each with 3 different explorations, I chose to user test the following flows. I did so to get feedback on the most natural entry point for this feature and to gauge how users felt about less essential sub-features (reaction bar, status updates, organizing Spotted playlists in different ways, and the notification center):

STEP 5: Testing the Feature

I user tested these flows with three users who have varying levels of familiarity with Spotify (from having used the app for over 5 years, to never having used the app before): Kaleigh Soucy, Julia Michelak, and Brennan O’Connor. I deduced the following trends and insights after user testing:

• Users were surprised to see a list of their friends upon clicking “See my Spotted.”

  • The original “See my Spotted” banner ought to be rebranded such that users know they will be taken to the home base for Spotted, rather than the playlist itself. Also, users may expect to see their friends under a tab that explicitly states “Friends.”

• Users would like to see what their friends are listening to at a given moment.

  • Users were not excited about the prospect of seeing their friends’ statuses on Spotify (nor were they enthusiastic about updating their own status because it would require too much effort). Being able to see what someone is listening to feels more personal to a user than being able to see what the user is doing while listening to music.

• Users liked the home screen as the main entry point to this feature.

  • The home screen is where users go to see their relevant playlists, and an entry point to the Spotted feature would fit in well with the other types of playlists there (such as your daily discovery). They noted that this was more casual than integrating it into the bottom dock of the app, where it would feel like it needed to occupy 1/4 of the information space.

• Users want notifications.

  • Users want some reminder about this feature to encourage them to check their Spotted playlist. They liked having a notification center to see a summary of the information there: who suggested what song, who liked what song, etc.

• Users felt the ability to react to a song was unnecessary.

  • Users feel that the ability to suggest songs to users and to acknowledge suggestions by adding the song to their playlist or liking the song is sufficient in-app communication.

STEP 6: Designing in Hi-Fi

Chosen High Fidelity Flow

I chose the flow illustrated below because it aligns the most with the pain points I initially pinpointed in my people problem by giving users a place to suggest songs to make sharing music feel natural. I also chose this flow because it eliminates the reaction bar and status update features, and instead displays what users are listening to when you swipe to the “friends” section within Spotted — decisions I made based upon my user testing findings.

High Fidelity Prototype

Conclusion

With the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a heightened need for new ways to connect virtually. For many people in my generation, music is a medium for connection: it’s intimate and reminiscent of time spent together. Spotted is a way to meaningfully redesign how users interact with music streaming apps by making them a platform for a distinct form personal connection, unlike the kind users gain from apps like Snapchat and Instagram. Spotted protects the privacy that people value having over their music by giving users agency to share only what they opt to share, while making music sharing casual by creating a platform specifically for that purpose.

There are several next steps that music streaming platforms could take to make their app more social. Spotted could be turned into a game (as feature 2 in my initial design proposed) to reward users for making good suggestions. Spotted could also be integrated into Spotify’s existing unique features — like Spotify wrapped, by including data on whose suggestions a user liked the most and who suggested the most songs to them. Spotted would open Spotify to becoming a more social and engaging app that users spend more time on while they are listening to music (rather than something that exclusively plays in the background of their life). Spotted would solve 2 pervasive contemporary problems at once: facilitate finding new music while generating personal bonds to transform music sharing as we know it.