SPOTIFY
CASE STUDY
The Spotify music application has the potential to engage users in socializing through listening and sharing music. This research will define problems with the Spotify app that can increase the user experience for users when solved.
Project Type: Independent
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Timeline: 2 weeks
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Role: UX Researcher
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Exploring New Opportunities
The Idea: Changing the way Spotify is able to connect with its users can allow users to include Spotify apart of their personal brand and life.
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The Challenge: Finding unique features for Spotify users to create and be apart of an engaging community.
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The Goal: The primary goal is to understand the users of Spotify and provide them a better way to listen and share music with others.
Skills: User Research
User Interviews
Card Sorting
Affinity Mapping
Problem Statements
The Research Process
Objectives
Determining the questions that must be explored and answered in this research
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Hypotheses
Assumptions we can make of the Spotify users and their behaviour
Methods
Based on the timeline and user availability, a method is selected to answer the research questions
Conduct
Data will be collected through the selected method(s)
Synthesis
Conclusions will be made to answer the objectives and approve or disprove the research hypotheses
Research Objectives
Spotify is searching for ways to increase social engagement using the Spotify application to share and listen to music. This research plan will analyze ways users can share music within the app and outside of the app through social media networks. Spotify wants to increase the presence of the brand among user's social profile while engaging new and potential users with the Spotify platform welcome them into the community. Spotify is also looking for innovative features to make sharing and listening to music a new experience for users.
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What are users' favourite part about music (beats, lyrics, vocals, production, performances, etc.) that they would be most interested in listening to or sharing? (e.g. music gets shared on Tik Tok for certain lyrics, beat drops, etc.)
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Where do users discover their music (radio, playlists, charts, people, social media, etc.)?
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Do users listen to or talk about music with other people (friends, family, etc.)? If so, where (in the car, at parties, during meals, etc.)?
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Do users share music with their friends, communities, or family? When and where do they share music (on release day, in person, social media, instant messaging, etc.)?
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Are users interested in the lives of the musical artists they engage with? Does this have the potential to increase listening and sharing of music? (live concerts, gossip, stan twitter, charting, etc.)
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Are users interested in sharing music? If so, to who? What kind of music are they interested in sharing [music they listen to, (only) individual songs/artists/albums]?
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Are users interested in observing other people’s music choices? (Does it bring a Positive or Negative feeling?)
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Research Hypothesis
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Spotify believes that increasing the features and accessibility for sharing and listening to music using the Spotify platform will increase promotion of the Spotify brand while attracting new users to the platform. This hypothesis will be confirmed if users have a positive interest in sharing music to their social media platforms. It is important to confirm that the socialization of music is appealing to Spotify users so that reliable features may be implemented.
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Research Methodology
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User interviews will be conducted with a various selection of participants with different backgrounds in regard to their music and social media usage. Participants in this study will be recruited via social media to ensure all users are active on social media and will consist of all music platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Pandora, Radio, etc.). Participants will be asked if they use music sharing features on social media or within their streaming platform such as Instagram story music, official Tik Tok music, Spotify’s share on Instagram story, streaming platform’s “share to” feature, etc. This will allow the team to observe how music is shared in collaboration with social media before the study takes place. It is important that some participants are highly engaged in the music world (e.g. social media fan accounts) where others are not (e.g. people who listen to old music) and that there are a variety of technical backgrounds (to simplify any possible modifications).
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Conducting User Interviews
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Three users were interviewed to discover when, where, why, and how they listen and share music in their lives. Two of the users are currently use Spotify as their main streaming platform and the other user uses Spotify's leading competitor, Apple Music. A topic map was created to guide myself through the interview.
Research Synthesis
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After collecting and summarizing the data from the user interviews, an affinity map was made to examine patterns and themes within the research. Five themes were found to demonstrate the current state of the Spotify application.
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The Problem Statements
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A problem statement is generated from each theme discovered in the research to raise awareness of potential user needs and generate a starting point for solutions. The problem statements created based on the user research are stated below.
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A college student who feels under pressure entertaining a party needs to change the music for the crowd (DJ) but faces difficulty playing music the crowd enjoys.
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A high school student feels overworked about sending/receiving music to people as they must respond back but face difficulty playing the music since they are subscribed to a different streaming platform.
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A parent who feels bored about staying up with current music events needs to search through their news source but faces the lack of information regarding music they actually care about and are familiar with.
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A parent of young children feels annoyed about entertaining their children in the car needs to listen to the kids music but faces irritation not being able to listen to their own music.
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A young adult who feels embarrassed to share their fun concert videos at a concert needs to share their experience with their peers but faces difficulty with quality and excess noise (screaming/their singing) in the background of their concert videos.
Interface improvements” was chosen to be a theme as the user pointed out existing features and abilities of the Spotify app that are not easily accessible or known. This will cause less users to engage with those features and use these features that already exist because the user interface makes it difficult to find or use. Another theme is the “lack of features available” on the Spotify app. The user brought up potential areas for sharing and listening to music that the Spotify app does not have any features to support the user. These could be missed areas when thinking about increasing the social aspects of the Spotify app. The theme “information that is shared” covers some music related data that users enjoy sharing that can be related to the music itself. Potential information being added within the app can lead to an increase in music shared. The user demonstrated many of their “user habits” during the research interview which may be observed as behavioural data. This theme can showcase common patterns in users and their reasoning for listening and sharing music. Possible app difficulties and problems can also arise when observing the users. Lastly, a theme regarding “discovering music potential” was created as there were some topics where the user is on the receiving end of sharing music. This can assist the app in finding and sharing music when the user is in social settings that may hold potential improvements to the app.
Project Learnings
After completing my first UX research, I made several notes about areas I should focus on for my next area of work.
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Focus on the user's behaviour and not their attitude. There were many cases where user's spoke highly of their feelings although their actions were contradicting.
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The designer is not the user. I found myself searching for validation of my hypothesis instead of determining the actual problems to compare with my research hypothesis.
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Do not assume the problem. I began the research believing I already knew the problem leading me to search for answers before I was able to confirm my hypothesis and discover multiple other problems.