Spotify Messaging Case Study

Spotify Messaging Feature

Case Study

How would Spotify design a new social feature that would increase user engagement and enhance their experience while feeling like a natural addition to the product?

Timeline

80 hours, Mar 2022 - Apr 2022

Company

Spotify

End-to-end UX/UI designer. Research, wireframing, prototyping, visual design, user testing

My role

Tools used

Figma, Miro, Whimsical

Spotify encourages external sharing because it is a great lever for organic growth. However, it does little to foster community building. Spotify’s focus on third-party sharing also leads to an inconsistent and unorganized experience for the users which can negatively contribute to the number of daily active users.

Research

Research Methods Used

I conducted secondary research and competitive analysis to better understand the music streaming market and who the target user base for my feature would be.

Individual interviews were conducted both in-person and remotely over Zoom. The goal was to gain better insight into the needs, wants, frustrations, and motivations of current Spotify users in relation to their music-sharing habits.

A sample of questions and answers

Q: “How do you discover new music?”

A: “Friends will send music to me quite often. That’s the main avenue.”

A: “My son shares music with me more than anyone. Occasionally college buddies will say ‘have you heard this song or band?”

Q: “How do you share songs or playlists? What platforms do you share them on?”

A: “I usually copy the Spotify link and then send it via text, WhatsApp, or Messenger”

A: “I make playlists monthly that I share. Primarily through texting or discord”

Q: “How do you keep track of music other people share with you?”

A: “Oh, I don’t have a way to. I literally don’t have a way of doing that.”

A: “I’ll listen to songs that get texted to me. It would be cool if you could send me songs through Spotify and I could have a list or queue and have the song and who sent it to me on there”

Notable insights from my research

52% of Spotify listening time comes from smartphones and tablets (42% mobile, 10% tablet)

Millennials make up 55% of Spotify’s user base. Only 2% of Spotify’s users are 65+

Younger demographics are more likely to send and receive music recommendations to and from peers with roughly 50% of those between ages of 13-39 discovering new music through friends

Spotify users share music through many different third-party messaging applications, which leads to frustration in not having a way to organize shared music across all of these platforms

The participants in my user interviews mentioned sharing music through these third-party messaging applications

Learning from the past

While doing research for this project, I noticed that Spotify used to have a messaging feature on their app but removed it in February 2017 due to the “huge disparity between the use of the feature and the manpower required to maintain it”. I then looked into user responses to the removal of the messaging feature and learned that the majority of Spotify users at that time fell into two camps; either the feature was an invaluable part of their Spotify experience that they absolutely loved or they had no idea that it existed.

I looked into how the previous messaging feature was integrated into the app and noticed that it was first and foremost difficult to find, hidden away in the UI. It also did not give users notifications when they received new messages which severely limited user engagement.

This information was used to guide the direction of the new design in order to avoid the pitfalls of the previous feature.

Define

I took an iterative approach to this project. I gained feedback throughout the project that made an impact at each stage of the process.

For the information architecture creation of this Spotify feature, I created a user persona, some initial sketches of the homepage, a sitemap, user flows, and low-fidelity wireframes.

For this feature, I wanted to make the action of sending music through the application to feel like a natural addition to the product: from the icon in the navigation to opening a shared item from a conversation

Design

The design of this feature had to follow existing Spotify brand guidelines to make the integration feel natural.

I created a UI kit, but nearly all of the elements existed previously in the application. From this, I developed the first iteration of high-fidelity screens for the feature.

Messages home and group messaging

The messages home page was designed with existing Spotify pages in mind while being recognizable and functional as a messaging application. Group messages were included as well as individual messages because, during the research phase, every participant mentioned sending music and playlists to groups in other third-party messaging applications. For the interest of user organization, it made sense to have groups highlighted in the prototype.

Shared With You and Friend Mix playlist

These playlists were designed to encourage users to engage with the new messaging feature. Shared With You is a playlist that automatically compiles all of the songs sent to the user through Spotify Messaging, providing even more organization. Friend Mix would work similarly to Discover Weekly, but would give the user a blend of their close friend’s recent repeatedly listened to songs. I included a way to edit the user’s close friends list so they can choose whose music gets included in the playlist and they can opt-out of having their own listening history shared through existing privacy controls.

Sharing and creating conversations

Choosing to share music through Spotify would lead the user to this first screen in which they have suggestions from existing conversations as well as being able to search for their friends and add new contacts. Being able to share with people in the users’ Spotify friend network would encourage more community building within the app and hopefully increase Spotify’s daily users.

Test

I created a functional prototype with which I conducted 3 usability tests of 4 scenarios for the new messaging and social flows.

Goals

Determine if this feature has value for the existing Spotify users that share music frequently.

Evaluate the interactions the users have with the Spotify application, identifying current pain points, potential pain points, and successes of the messaging flow, architecture, and design.

Gain insight into how and why users would interact with this feature.

Based on my usability tests, I created an affinity map and a prioritization matrix in order to prioritize the most important revisions to the design.

Priority Revisions

Before user testing

Problems based on feedback from users

The oldest participant had difficulty spotting the messaging feature in the navigation on first use. Lack of feedback after completing tasks such as updating close friends list led to confusion over whether or not the action was successful

After user testing

Solutions to these problems

Included tooltips and action feedback pop-ups to match how Spotify currently introduces new features in the application and to give users visual cues that their tasks were completed successfully to curb confusion

Before user testing

Problems based on feedback from users

2 participants had difficulty finding the profile of someone they are not friends with. Both participants went first to “search conversations” followed by using the “search” function in the navigation bar

After user testing

Solutions to these problems

Created an additional flow for finding a non-followed profile. Also allowed users to search for non-friend profiles in the “New Conversation” search bar which would then direct users to add a new contact

Before user testing

One participant had difficulty finding the Spotify icon under the “share” screen and another said, “When you hit the three dots next to a song, what if it was like ‘send via messages’ or ‘send to friend’ underneath the add to playlist option or something” suggesting a separate share action from the third-party messaging would be beneficial

Problems based on feedback from users

Included a new, separate option for sending directly through Spotify which would be more easily recognized when not grouped with the external messaging applications and would encourage more users to interact with this feature

Solutions to these problems

Reflection

This project was the first time I had worked on creating an additional feature to an existing product and the first time designing a chat feature. I have been an avid Spotify user for many years so being able to conceptualize and build a new feature for the mobile application was an exciting journey, even though the direction I chose was also more work than I had anticipated. This is best illustrated by comparing my initial low-fidelity wireframes with my final prototype. The former only had 12 screens while the latter ended up with 64. Creating an engaging social feature that would help Spotify’s business grow by building a stronger community while at the same time making it feel natural to the product was the ultimate goal and I think the final design does a successful job of this.