Conceptual project
soundmate
A music app that improves user engagement with a social feature and connects like-minded people.
The music streaming industry has been rapidly booming over the past few years with the impact of Covid-19. In 2020, most countries imposed lockdowns to control the virus from spreading. People spend more time at home and stream content than ever, leading to an increasing number of subscribers on music streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music.
Moreover, platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube significantly increased subscribers who engage in live streaming. In the U.S., video content containing music audio has been streaming more frequently. In conclusion, music is a way people connect, and it is constantly shared through various social media platforms.
| Music Streaming Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Service (On-demand Streaming, Live Streaming), By Platform (Apps, Browsers), By Content Type, By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030 |
Music streaming giants such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music lack social interactions in their apps, while the demand for social connection is high due to the pandemic.
In this fiercely competitive industry, we are considering creating a music streaming app that integrates with an add-on feature related to the social spectrum, which brings the user experience to the next level.
This is how I came up with the solutions, let me walk you through.
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
User Interview & Survey
Affinity Map
User Persona
User Journey
Problem Statement
Brainstorming Feature
Roadmap
Sitemap
Wireflow
Usability Testing
High-Fidelity Prototype
Affinity Map
Final Prototype
I started with analyzing the market to get a better understanding of the music stream industry, how it has changed since the pandemic, and who is the target audience of the market.
Due to Covid-19, people spend more time at home and stream content than ever, leading to an increasing number of subscribers on music streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music.
Spotify is the top competitor within the commercial music app community.
Through my research, I found:
After having a clear portrait of who target users are, I created the user persona to represent key audience segments. It helps me tackle the most critical problems and address the significant needs of the most important user groups.
With the user journey, persona, and insights from the research stage, I generated a series of How Might We questions to fuel my process for a solution brainstorming session later on.
Next, Efrain & I started a brainstorming session together with the listed How Might We questions. We spent 2-3 minutes brainstorming the solutions for each problem and replaying the process with a second round to develop as many solutions as possible.
We want to create a music app that blends modern streaming with social media. Music is a way in which people connect, and it is constantly shared through various social media platforms. Our app would allow users to share the music they are currently listening to, engage in friends' music share posts, and send music directly to other users. This app targets young adults who frequently use social sharing music will become a much easier and more enjoyable experience under one platform.
After deciding what features to include, I created a site map to define the overall content structure of the Soundmate app when integrating the new social feature. The goal is to make a logical and easy route for users to navigate while shying them away from being overwhelmed when my persona is in the mood for entertainment and doesn't want to waste time to obtain the goals.
I created a wire flow to represent the layout of the pages in tandem with communicating ideas regarding interaction design and user workflows. These designs focused on social interaction, recommendations, and privacy settings to help users stay engaged with their loved ones within the app and have complete control over their activities.
With the initial prototype ready, I then drafted an early usability test plan by defining the core tasks for users to complete, questions for them during testing time, and the note-taking template. Wireframe testing helped my design evolve in a way that made it more usable and functional. I also found errors early on in the process, saving me time and energy when building high-fidelity.
It is time to test my design choices and assumptions that have been made about the navigability, the screens, and the actions associated with different tasks. I then added interactions & animations to the high-fidelity wireframes to generate a prototype.
I used Maze to test with other 8 users, and here is the result:
The demographic of our initial interviewees are young adults who are students or have careers, and who use both social media and music streaming quite often in their day-to-day lives. For that, we decided to blend social media and music streaming into one platform, an app that focuses on the sharing of music. After testing our high-fidelity mobile app, one of the challenges that users faced was being able to remove songs or edit playlists. We fixed that issue by adding a tooltip indicating the action that allowed the removal of songs.
Something surprising about the testing was that some users felt unfamiliar with it because they were Apple Music users and not Spotify users. However, some users felt that the app was very intuitive because of its similarities to Spotify. Although we used Spotify as our main inspiration, we tried to create an app layout that was not entirely related to Spotify. Something we learned about the experience was the range of mobility within screens and the amount of interactivity that pages needed to create the best user experience. We also learned to recognize the major aspects of both music streaming and social media apps to create a good blend in one app.
Copyright © Linh Nguyen | Made by Linh Nguyen with ☕️ and 💖 in Orange County, California.
