A social reimagining of the Spotify user experience.
Spotify users love the personalized curation inside the product, the breadth of audio available and the ability to shape their listening experiences as their own. Providing them with an integrated way to share their audio experiences and expand their personalization options will give them an unrivaled offering of social media and audio combined.
Project type
Design challenge as part of cohort
Role
Product designer
What is the problem?
The current social features inside Spotify are lacking in depth, painfully buried in the settings menu and are occurring primarily outside the product on other social platforms. To create a social experience that is both intentional and useful, it would require a reimagining of the profile page and how audio is shared inside the app.
User Research
Surveying existing users
It was important to get a sense of what current users of Spotify like about the product and what their main motivations for using it are. My first step was to survey users remotely using Typeform in order to define what their actual felt needs were.
Affinity mapping
With the data gathered from my survey, I created an affinity map to visualize key issues users current pain points and other issues.From the research it was clear that personalization (curation & customization) and social connection were the most common areas where users had a felt need.
Research summary
It was clear from the research and interviews with users that there was a strong desire for a more robust social experience inside the Spotify app. The common theme was that people like to share music and podcasts that are important to them or have made an impact on them and being able to include friends and family in those moments is a feature many of them thought was glaring missing element.
Ideating a new user experience
Working through solutions
I went through phases of sketches and quick wireframes to try and problem solve the best solution. Based on my user research, I knew expanding the profile page features and integrating some kind of way to see what friends are listening to were elements I wanted to design.
A new way to Spotify
New Profile Page
The profile page is the new hub for Spotify users. Here is where users can see what their friends are listening to, send direct messages, access their followers/following and create custom audio lists to express anything they feel like telling the world.
Custom Lists
Custom lists on gives users the ability to personalize their profile page and become the ultimate expression of their audio personality.
Drawing on inspiration from MySpace profile songs from back in the day (which was a common request that was made in my research), this is the opportunity for users to broadcast their preferences to the world.
Custom lists allow users to highlight personal lists of audio that matter to them. Create a "Top 10 BEST EVEEER" list. Let the world know about "That Summer Breakup". Highlight "Bored In Tha house and I'm.." Users can customize this space on their profile and share any creative expression of audio playlist they want.
Spotify With Friends
Connect with friends and share in a new, community focused, Spotify experience.From the home page, users can see what friends are listening and get inspired to check out to something new from their custom lists on their profile pages.
Currently Listening To
I consistently heard from many of the users I surveyed that they didn't know how to see what their friends were listening to. For many of them, they valued their friends' audio tastes and recommendations more than Spotify's suggestions.
The Currently Listening carousel on the profile page was the implementation I thought could best solve this issue. It's familiar, as it draws on inspiration from "Stories" on other social media platforms, and it invites you to tap in and explore since you only get a small album cover preview next to your friends picture.It's the ultimate invitation to "judge a book by the (album) cover."
Direct Messaging
The simplest way for users to stay in touch and share what they're listening to with their friends is to just message them.
Previously, users could only share music or podcasts through external sharing options (like a text message, email, etc). It's important to keep users on the platform, as any activities that are outsourced are lost opportunities to engage with them and create deeper affinity with the product.
Direct Messages was the clear solution to sharing inside the app, as many competitor social platforms already have this feature implemented so familiarity is high for users.
Testing Feedback
From testing this solution with some existing Spotify users using Maze, the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive. Many were bummed that Spotify currently doesn't have a more robust social experience like this, as they loved the profile page with custom lists and the endless creativity it affords when building them.
Feedback I received was to create a "read" and "unread" status for the Currently Listening section, as users wanted to differentiate what friends they've already clicked on.
How I Would Iterate From Here
Dreaming more about how the social features could expand, implementing ephemeral posts could help retain even more users who currently share their listening experiences on Instagram stories. This could also open up more business revenue opportunities through targeted posts.