Spotify Case Study
An application enhancement project based on customer feedback. (2018)
Overview
Role
Skills
UX Researcher
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Heuristic Analysis
User Testing
Persona and Empathy Map
User Journey Mapping
Information Architecture
Spotify, a music streaming app in trend, currently has over 100 million active users and ranked No. 1 on App Store and No. 2 on Google Play. However, do the users really satisfied with their experience? Is there anything that can be improved? While Amazon, Youtube, and other big companies are joining the game, will Spotify still hold its throne up and high?
This is a non-affiliate personal project to identify the pain points and come up with possible suggestions to the existing paid version on iPhone.
Challenge
Surprisingly, as a frequent user, I have only used about 40% of the features, and most of the users I interviewed had accessed less than 30% of the features. Therefore, only 30% - 40% of the features were examined. Would the other 60% features necessary? The challenge would be identifying the core features and de-clutter.
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Reflection
This case study has allowed me to perform on my pace. By experimenting with different research methods, I have learned the pros and cons from each method. Because of this project, I have gained the experience as a user researcher through conducting surveys, interviews, and usability tests; as well as analyzing the collected data.
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Design Process
Since I installed Spotify on all of my devices: laptops, phones, and even use it in car screencasting. I have noticed the difference between the desktop version and the app version. In this case study, I have chosen to focus on making some enhancements to the app version through three phases: Research, Analysis, and Result.
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Heuristic Analysis with Competitors
The first analysis is based on the Norman Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics to compare the strength and weakness between Spotify, Pandora, and Amazon Music.
Research Plan
To gain a deeper understanding of what other Spotify subscribers undergo, I have conducted a primary user research. I have run a questionnaire of 28 music lovers and interviewed some of them to gather their opinions. I asked about how and when they use the Spotify app, as well as the error they encountered while using it.
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User Testing on Spotify (version 8.4.53.689)
Based on my experience as a Spotify user, I developed a set of tasks that I thought would be ideal for revealing major issues by observing users’ natural inclinations in navigating the app.
I picked 5 qualified users from the research plan to participate in this user testing session while performing the interview.
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Task 1. Create a playlist
Task 2. Search for the Bee Gees album "Greatest", then add it into the playlist they just created
Task 3. Search for this song: Rihanna - Umbrella then add it to their playlists
Task 4. Rename the playlist
Task 5. Remove the third song on their playlists
Task 6. Sort the songs by added date
Task 7. Find the bio information of Khalid
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There are many findings and comments collected from this user testing. After analyzing, the feedback can be categorized into the following sections:
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Users are not aware of all of the options, such as adding songs by different actions, adding the whole album, putting songs in queue.
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Users are not aware of the features, such as sort and filter.
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Users cannot find a specific item or perform an action, such as delete icon and microphone.
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Persona and Empathy Map
According to my finding, the majority of Spotify users are age 18-39. I have created a persona reflecting a typical Spotify user.
User Journey Mapping
Based on the user testing result from the discovery phase, there are two challenging tasks.
Task 5. Remove the third song on your playlist
Many participants had trouble with removing songs from their playlists. Some of them even skipped the task because they already knew they could not do it.
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Task 6. Sort the songs by date added
Most of the participants can finish the task easily, but some said they have googled it before, and still took a long to find the sort button while performing the task.
Information Architecture (IA)
According to the result of the user testing, most of the participants only use about 30 to 35 percent of the features. The main issue during the user testing session is that they cannot perform some specific tasks. Although each participant struggled with different tasks, however, they have the same issue of getting confused by the labels and overwhelmed by the contents while looking for the answer.
According to my findings, the main issues while navigating through the apps are overloaded contents, confusing labels, and lack of hierarchy.
Overloaded Contents
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There are 14 items on the home page. Those are the personalized contents which are subjected to change frequently. But do the users need these many recommendations? Take my experience as an example, I have found the items repeated many times. In fact, I had two recommended playlists with overlapped songs before.
Confusing Labels
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“Made for you”, “Recommended for you”, and “Your Daily Mix” are playlists with similar choices of songs according to the user's taste.
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“Your Heavy Rotation” and “Jump Back In” seem to represent the same meaning at the first glance. As I dig deeper, I found the former one is a collection of the most played lists, the other is a collection of the Albums which were searched before.
Lack of Hierarchy
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The main categories are the recently played, the most recommended, and the newest arrival. Instead of providing a consistent flow, all contents are randomly placed. For example, the home page has the "Recently Played" in between two "New Music Recommends to you" playlists.
After trimming down the duplicate contents and giving it a hierarchy, the structure is much simpler and clearer. This revised IA has solved three main issues while navigating through the app as the mock interface as shown below.
Original Interface
My goal is to minimize actions to find more contents by trimming down the duplications and providing a hierarchy in order to allow users to see the whole picture without any unnecessary steps.
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The differences between the two IAs are mainly on the Home, Browse, and Radio pages.
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Home: I define the home page as a place to discover new music. The hierarchy is allowing users to see things in the order of: “Made for you”, “Popular Playlists”, and “Recommended Playlists by Genre”. With these three main categories, users can see all contents at a glance. If the users want to know more about different genres, they can always swipe to see more. Instead of having 14 recommendations, I suggest a limit of 5. If users want to know more, they can always go to the Browse page to explore more music.
Browse: I removed all popular playlists because it was repeated from the Home page. Browse is set to be used when users want to look for something more specific.
Radio: I removed “Your Daily Mix” because it was a playlist, not a radio station. I also matched the grid's style here to the Genre style in the Browse page to unify the design.
Mock Interface with Revised Information Atchitecture
5 More Modification Recommendations​​
1. Display the search bar and 'Sort by' button
By default, the filter/search bar is hidden as well as the context menu icon. Users have to scroll down to see the bar and menu. After revised, the filter bar is directly displayed above the songs.
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2. Have the remove icon and add the icon on the same display
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A song can be added to a playlist from the individual song page.
However, to remove a song, an user has to go back to the playlist page for the delete button.
Suggest adding an option to delete one item from the same level of adding a song to the playlist. The original way can still be kept and use as a bulk delete.
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3. Make the feedback icon consistent
Currently, The Radio station has “Thumbs up” and “Thumbs down” icons, and the Recommended playlist has “Love” and “Block”, which could lead to confusion.​
4. Lyrics need to be more obvious since many participants don’t know the Spotify displays lyrics.
Only the “Explicit” songs have lyrics. In addition, the lyrics are pushed in a mixture with “Content Behind the Lyrics”, which is distractive. Play the demo video with sound to experience more.
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According to the current interface, users can swipe down and go back to the album view if they don’t want to see the lyrics. I suggest separate “Lyrics” and “Content Behind the Lyrics” into different cubes, so that user can choose between them.
5. Add Help Center
I suggest adding a Help Center or FAQ because Spotify has many hidden icons and gestures. This will help the users with some basic instructions.