Concept Redesign
Project Overview
I focused on identifying the current pain points related to the podcast listening experience of Spotify's Android users.
Scope of Work
This project sought to improve the podcast listening experience that would support Android users who utilize Spotify.
Competitive
Analysis
User
Research
Iterative
Design
Product
Testing
Problem Statement
How can I provide more user control of app settings and easier access to new relevant content?
Research
Competitive Analysis
I wanted to understand Spotify's market value and how it brings utility to its customers.
Methodology: Business Model Canvas
I conducted market research for two days to have an accurate perspective of Spotify.
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Spotify has a freemium, value-driven, self-service, and community cost structure.
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Spotify has multiple key partnerships across various industries including online gaming, radio shows, and music groups.
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Most significant revenue streams: advertisement and subscription fees.
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United States target groups: 18-24 and 25-34-years-old.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/475821/spotify-users-age-usa/
Methodology: Feature Analysis
I analyzed competitors and comparators through ten features that I identified as common to music apps. The competitors I identified are in the same market as Spotify, while the comparators offer similar functions/features in different markets or industries.
Competitors
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All of the platforms are free for users.
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Key features: searchability through categories, freemium services, personalized recommendations, external access to content.
Comparators
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Featured on the same apps through the parent company, ABC.
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Key features: audio transcription, searchability through categories, personalized recommendations, external access to content.
Overall Findings: Competitive Analysis
While several apps support users listening to podcasts, I decided to focus on the most used podcast listening app, Spotify. Features that I identified as common to podcast listening apps include searchability through categories, freemium services, personalized recommendations, and external access to content. These findings allowed me to craft appropriate questions necessary for the screener survey to progress to user research.
User Research
I set out to validate my hypothesis through user interviews to understand how participants feel about their current podcast listening experience.
Methodology: Screener Survey
For a week, I created and distributed a screener survey to podcast listeners. I formed the questions from insights gained through competitive analysis. I sought to contact people considered a part of the target audience—Podcast listeners who use streaming services between 18 and 34 years of age.
Findings
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Twenty-three submissions: 13% were 18–24 years old, 65% were 25–39 years old, and 22% were 40-54 years old.
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The majority of participants were within the older age bracket of the desired user group.
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100% of participants identified as podcast listeners.
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65% of participants listen to podcasts every day. 26% of participants listen to podcasts once a week. 9% of participants listen to podcasts on occasion.
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Entertainment and personal development were the two main reasons why users listen to podcasts. Professional development was the third main reason.
Methodology: User Interviews
For four days, I moderated user interviews over Zoom.
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Five people: 4 people were a part of the older age bracket within the desired user group.
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Interview script used for all interviews.
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I recorded all interviews with user permission to collect insights.
Findings
Podcast listeners shared that they want more autonomy (that could lead to a hyper-personalized experience). It was also determined that the majority of users listen to podcasts through Android devices.
Overall Findings: User Research
Podcast listeners enjoy their podcast episodes through streaming services accessible on their Android devices. These listeners seek more autonomy to enhance their personalized experience of podcasts focused on entertainment, personal development and/or professional development.
Synthesis
The responses from user interviews led to the synthesis of data through the creation of an affinity map, a tool used to identify user feedback trends/patterns.
Methodology: Affinity Map
Through Miro, interviewees'/users' responses were placed on color-coded Post-it notes then organized based on themes.
Findings
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Daily, most users mainly use a cell phone to listen to various topics covered through podcasts.
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Positive experiences include controlling playing speed, saving all podcasts, and changing the output device of sound via Bluetooth.
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Most users dislike notifications; other negative experiences include poor audio, lackluster content, and a lack of a consistent listening experience across platforms.
Trends included listening habits, type of mobile device, and most used streaming platform.
The trends and insights from affinity mapping led to the identification of actionable insights which influenced iterative design.
Overall Finding: Synthesis
The synthesis from affinity mapping led me to reexamine the problem statement and revise it based on the insight from data synthesis.
Revised Problem Statement
From my research, I learned that most users listen to podcasts via Spotify on a daily basis through Android mobile devices. Across all platforms, users are not satisfied with losing their place in a podcast episode. They are also not satisfied with the inability to continue an episode across various platforms without losing their place within the episode, as well as the poor design of podcast platforms. From these findings, I determined that Spotify could benefit from a concept redesign that could address these user needs.
How can I provide an enhanced personalized podcast experience through mobile devices?
After I revised the problem statement, I progressed to the design phase of the Agile process.
Iterative Design
Actionable Insights
The insight gained from user research led to actionable insights that influenced the identification of four key features.
Users are not satisfied with grouping podcasts with music selections. » A distinct feature where people can view their library of podcasts and music separately.
Users don't like the automatic display of podcasts from the initial episode. » A feature that enables users to modify how their podcasts are displayed.
Users want to find new engaging content. » A feature that allows users to find new, popular podcasts.
Users want to start and continue a podcast episode across various platforms without losing their place in the episode. » A function that gives the users a choice to sync their podcast platforms.
Methodology: Design Studio
I created low fidelity wireframes to ideate potential design solutions for the problem space while keeping the competitive analysis and user research in mind. This fidelity consisted of paper wireframes created through a round of design studio.
Findings
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Grayed-out feature.
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Re-order button.
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Promotion of trending content.
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Sync platform feature.
Insight: Redesign Spotify to give Android users a sense of enhanced autonomy when listening to various topics through podcasts.
Methodology: Mid-fi Wireframes
The results of round 1 of product testing led to the creation of mid-fidelity wireframes from a Figma community template, which progressed to a mid-fi prototype. This fidelity differentiated from the lo-fi wireframes by being a purely digital iteration influenced by user interviews.
Findings
This fidelity was my digital design to showcase the influence of user research.
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Lean into the concept of enhanced autonomy e.g., reordering the sequence of episodes, syncing episodes across platforms, and distinct separation of podcasts and music.
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Provide easy discovery of new engaging content.
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Focus the redesign for Android users since most users interviewed used these devices and to account for Spotify's expansion into countries mostly dominated by Andriod devices.
Methodology: Hi-fi Wireframes
Findings
I reiterated wireframes for high fidelity based on the results of Round 1 of product testing. This fidelity contained key essential features identified through user research and the prior round of product testing.
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Include a search bar.
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Improve Trending navigation to increase user intuitiveness through the task flow.
Once I created mid and high-fidelity wireframes I progressed to the product testing phase of this project.
Product Testing
Insights gained from user research and design sessions allowed me to assess Spotify's concept redesign.
Methodology: Initial User Testing
Findings
I created three tasks to test based on user interview insight to assess our app's navigability and intuitiveness.
Task 1: Finish a podcast episode that was initiated on another platform.
Task 2: Find a listing of popular, recently added podcasts.
Task 3: Find the initial release of a recently added podcast.
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Tasks 1 and 2 were completed through direct and indirect success.
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Task 2 seemed to be the task that was the most intuitive.
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The majority of users failed task 3.
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During open questions, the majority of users shared that they used Android devices.
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Remember that hi-fi wireframes need to be created for Android devices.
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Users requested a search bar.
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Navigation for "Trending" wireframes needs to be improved.
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For task 3, users think "recently added episode" means in general on the platform and not a new, trending podcast.
Insight: Redesign is necessary to increase the direct success of tasks.
Methodology: Final Round
After design reiterations based on Round 1 of testing, I assessed four tasks through a final product testing round. The tasks were the same as those used in the first round of testing.
Findings
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Task 2 was the only task that did not experience failure.
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The majority of users experienced some form of success for task 1.
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Tasks 3 continued to have the most significant percentage of failure.
Insight: Overall, users accomplished tasks faster but their level of success decreased or was constant when compared to the results of the first round of testing. The change in difficulty rating (delta) also varied across tasks.
Improved navigation for task 2 seemed to have decreased the difficulty rating and completion time.
For task 3, the lack of the word "popular" before "recently added" seemed to confuse users in terms of where they should navigate to achieve success for this task.
Final Recommendations
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Users enjoy the function of task 1, improve the navigation and design of relevant wireframes.
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Overall, continue to practice creating more specific and clear tasks. I was mistaken in my assumption of users' denotation for keywords used in task 3.
Overall Findings
Through competitive analysis, user research, and product testing, I concept redesigned Spotify to provide an enhanced hyper-personalized solution to the problem statement. Improved navigation proved to be beneficial for a task. At the same time, there is also a need for me to have continued practice in creating more specific and clear tasks for usability testing overall.