Spotify
Blurring the lines between music and daily life through hyper-personalizing Spotify's home contents
App Redesign
I led a redesign project for Spotify Korea by creating a hyper-personalized listening experience. We delivered the final design to the design agency.
TIMELINE
Apr - Jun 2024
ROLE
Lead Designer
TEAM
3 UX Designers
1 Graphic Designer
TOOLS
Figma
Illustrator
Miro
OVERVIEW
Under the supervision of the director of Right Brain, one of the largest UI/UX Design consultancies in Korea, I had the opportunity to lead a redesign project alongside three other designers. Over the course of three months, we went through each step of the design process to develop a final prototype.
Our ultimate goal of the project was to create a hyper-personalized music journey via Spotify by enhancing the overall user experience under the home and search tabs.
BACKGROUND
Spotify's market share is only 4% in South Korea compared to 30% globally.
In the third quarter of 2023, Spotify made up over 30% of the global music streaming market share, followed by Apple Music, Tencent Music, and Amazon (Source: Statista).
Although currently the world’s largest music streaming platform, Spotify’s market share in South Korea has been unsatisfactory since its launch 2021. Due to the popularity of YouTube’s Premium membership that includes YouTube Music, YouTube Music claims about a third (33.7%) of Korea’s music streaming market share, followed by Korean companies Melon and Genie. Spotify ranks #6 overall, with only 4% of the market share (Source: Mobile Index).
What's the breakthrough?
Differentiate Spotify through a hyper-personalized listening experience.
In order to expand market share, improve usability, and maximize conversion rate in South Korea, we decided to redesign the overall user experience of the Spotify app by highlighting distinctive features and developing a hyper-personalized music journey that’s not supported by other music streaming services.
PROJECT SCOPE
Journey Analysis
Analyzing user journey based on major experiences
Problem Scope
Identifying problems based on major experiences
USER RESEARCH
Online Survey
In order to gain a better understanding of user behavior and patterns, we conducted an online survey. A total of 52 responses were gathered, and the age group was limited to individuals in their 20s to 30s for a more centralized research.
TAKEAWAYS
#1 Music recommendation is top priority
30% of respondents consider personalized music recommendations as a determining factor when choosing a music streaming platform.
#2 Home tab is not engaging
About half of the respondents are unsatisfied with the contents presented in the “Home” tab and would like improvements in personalization, the variety of information, and UX writing.
#3 Personalized contents are unsatisfactory
Among respondents who are unsatisfied with Spotify’s recommendations, the main reasoning was related to repetitive music and playlist recommendations, and not knowing what the recommendations are based on.
USER INTERVIEWS
On top of survey results, we wanted to hear more personal, authentic stories on how users engage with Spotify on a daily basis.
Our team conducted an in-depth interviews with 8 users who have used Spotify for at least a month. We asked multi-faceted interview questions utilizing user interview techniques including 5 whys, narration, card-sorting, word concept association, and what-if questions.
KEY FINDINGS
We summarized key findings, primarily focusing on pain points that involve common experiences related to personalization.
PERSONA MODELING
Behavioral Variable Analysis
Based on users' behavioral patterns and preferences, we created 8 major categories to better conceptualize user personas
USER PERSONAS
JOURNEY MAP
PROTOTYPE
PRODUCT FEATURES
Solution #1
Reorganize Home Tab with relatable contents
Solution #2
Improve recommendations via customizable data
Solution #3
Capture moments in your daily life through music
USER TESTING
We conducted user testing on 10 individuals. Each individual spent about 10-15 minutes on the prototype and gave feedback on their experience.
9/10 users
Believe that the new home tab is more engaging and easier to interact with due to the header pin function and clearer UX writing
8/10 users
Find the Spotify Lens feature interesting and original as they can more easily integrate music into their daily lives, but some are apprehensive about its accuracy and privacy
5/10 users
Interested in utilizing the taste analysis page — some find it useful to improve the accuracy of music recommendations, while others believe that it's not their job but the algorithm's responsibility to analyze the nuances in personal data and suggest satisfactory recommendations
OUTCOME
We delivered the final design specs and artifacts to the leadership team.
For our final outcome, we successfully delivered the final design specs and relevant artifacts to the director and leadership team of the Right Brain design agency. I've summarized the key points from the presentation.
Fine-Tune Taste Analysis
Fine-tuning the Taste Analysis page is recommended because customizing personal analytics might be overcomplicated for certain users. Conduct further user testing to inform design decisions.
Potential for Spotify Lens
The Spotify Lens feature in particular received positive feedback for its potential in the integration of multimodal AI in music discovery. More use case scenarios should be analyzed.
UX Writing Improvement
Another recurring problem that can be quickly resolved is improvement in UX writing, especially with regards to better English-to-Korean translation and more intuitive descriptions.
REFLECTION
Is hyper-personalization the optimal UX solution?
PROS
Creating a hyper-personalized listening journey is anticipated to improve the retention rate of Korean users by increasing user engagement. The location-specific recommendations and Spotify Lens function will allow users to relate to the content more and thus encourage them to spend more time on the platform.
CONS
Algorithmic bias is one of the most pressing problems in hyper-personalization because recommendations can unintentionally reinforce certain types of biases, making it difficult for underrepresented artists or genres to surface organically.
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