Spotify Passport
A new feature to enhance the international music discovery process.
CONTRIBUTION User Research, Ideating, Prototyping, User Testing
TOOLS USEDFigma, Optimal Workshop, Otter.AI
DURATION4 weeks (April 2023)
BACKGROUNDIs the Spotify algorithm too good?
Without question, Spotify is the most popular music streaming platform in the world. One of the key factors contributing to their success lies in the personalized experience they offer through their algorithm-driven recommendations. As soon as you launch the app, your home page showcases a number of playlists and radio stations catered solely to you!
Spotify’s algorithm is masterfully good at understanding our tastes and listening habits—but is the algorithm too good? At what point is human interaction and curation still necessary?
PROBLEMDespite the seemingly endless selection, discovering new music on Spotify is still hard.
When wanting to discover new music, especially artists and genres outside of your usual interests, Spotify’s algorithm can feel very limiting. Not only does the feedback loop keep us stuck in a cycle of listening to familiar sounds, but even when we actively seek out something new we are often fed what is already popular and mainstream.
This can be especially frustrating for passionate listeners who often seek to discover smaller artists and sub-genres from countries and cultures different from their own, but need a bit more guidance.
SOLUTIONDiscover interesting, fresh sounds from people all across the world via a new feature, Spotify Passport.
Spotify Passport is a feature designed to help listeners discover hidden gems from all across the globe. Users connect with one another to share the distinct sounds from their part of the world.
PROJECT GOALSHow exactly do people share music?
I aimed to discover what people’s experiences are when sharing music with others and where the pain points lie. The goal was to then design a feature that could be seamlessly integrated into Spotify to best enhance the overall experience of sharing and discovering new music.
USER RESEARCHThe core of my research was centered around one-on-one user interviews with people who are openly passionate about music.
I intentionally wanted our discussions to feel broad and open so as to determine what truly matters most to people when sharing music and where the pain-points lie.
A few objectives to help guide my interviews:
Understand the process of music sharing and what it means to people, along with the emotions involved
Discover instances where someone shared a new artist or song, and the other person ended up really enjoying it
Understand if any cultural or generational differences come into play when sharing music
FINDINGSMy research provided a multitude of rich insights. Some were expected, such as feelings of connection and emotional expression when sharing music with others. One particular theme, however, emerged above the rest:
Human curation is still necessary!
My research shows that people deeply appreciate the personal touch that only come with recommendations from other people. Not only does it have more meaning, but the algorithm can also feel limiting as it often shows you artists and songs you are already familiar with.
Discovering more niche genres of music and independent artists is often a struggle, and this is especially the case when seeking out international artists.
THIS PROMPTED THE NORTHSTAR QUESTION:How might we connect music lovers with authentic, local music recommendations beyond Spotify’s algorithm?
USER PERSONA: WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR?Meet Ana, a passionate listener who is drawn to discovering sounds that feel interesting and fresh, particularly from other countries and cultures.
IDEATING
I aimed for ideas that felt original and tried very hard to steer away from simply embedding a standard social feature into Spotify.
I decided to move forward with an idea that builds off of the third and sixth boxes: a musical pen pal-type of feature that connects users from all across the globe.
NOW PICTURE THIS...I illustrated a storyboard to better understand my users’ needs and their journey.
Here, we can see Ana’s frustration with always being fed the same mainstream sounds she is already well-familiar with.
The next time she opens Spotify, however, she notices a new feature called Spotify Passport. This feature connects music lovers from across the world to share music with one another.
Users can be connected entirely at random or by choosing to connect to someone from a specific country (for example, connecting with a person from Guyana to learn more about Guyanese music).
Once connected, users can chat via the provided suggested prompts and begin swapping music.
USER FLOW
Mapping out a user flow was crucial in determining how our user will initially connect with others before they begin sharing music. I knew that I wanted to provide users with two options:
Connecting with a user from a selected specific country, for those who have a better idea of what they are searching for.
Connecting with users from countries at random to provide the ultimate opportunity for new music discovery.
LO-FIDELITY WIREFRAMINGWith Spotify’s existing UI in mind, I then began to sketch out a few potential screens.
I knew that a pop-up modal would be the most fitting to introduce the feature, as Spotify already uses these with new features and newly released music from already-loved artists.
It was a bit more challenging to work in the main screen where users would select their country of interest. I resulted with a solution that features a drop-down list along with some suggested regions.
BRANDING: COLOR PALETTE
Ensuring that Spotify Passport fits cohesively into their already existing design was imperative.
With Spotify’s Design Guidelines in mind, I sparingly used the green where fitting, the white for text, and the black for the background (also text where necessary).
BRANDING: ICONOGRAPHY
Designing the Passport icon also required replicating the weight, strokes, and overall look and feel of their current icon set.
I ended up designing a simple globe icon and embedding it into the bottom navigation between the Search and Your Library features.
USER TESTING
I ran tests with five participants, all of whom love to seek out new music.
How would success be gauged?
The key metric evaluated was a 100% task completion rate. How intuitive would this flow be?
I also wanted to hear from end-users and discover a few areas for design improvement.
FINDING #1Users prefer to skim text and learn through hands-on engagement.
It was surprising to me when nearly all of my users quickly glossed over the modal that explained the new Passport feature. This resulted in a lot of confusion throughout the rest of the flow with users also being unsure of what the new feature was at all.
When asked why they quickly skimmed, users stated their general preference of experiencing something first “by doing.”
FINDING #2List of countries feels overwhelming and leaves more to be desired.
While some users felt excited seeing all the countries listed, most expressed feeling overwhelmed. The list is undoubtedly long and is currently only broken up by continent. Users feel the list could be broken up further into sub-regions and then expand only when clicked upon, rather than displaying everything all at once as it currently is now.
Visually, the list also leaves a lot to be desired. Users feel that Spotify would have designed something more fun and interesting, perhaps even interactive.
What users did really engage with were the featured regions (shown on left). Nearly all expressed wanting to see more of these suggestions.
FINDING #3Users do not want to rely on the chat/social feature to obtain new music.
I received mixed feedback on the chat feature. While some users liked the suggested prompts and social aspect, most did not want to rely on chatting directly with another person in order to obtain music.
What users did really enjoy were the public playlists posted on the other person’s profile (shown on the first screen). It was also suggested that the prompts could instead be themes for other public playlists.
TAKEAWAYSContinue ideating as much larger, structural changes are needed in order for this design to solve our user’s problem.
My findings provided me much greater insight into what users ultimately desire. While smaller iterations could be made to the design, it is far more worth the investment to revert back to the ideation stage and re-work a solution that is not as reliant on human interaction. Users do appreciate the personal recommendations and curation of songs and artists from other people, but do not necessarily want to chat directly in order to discover new music.
My next step is to reflect deeply on each of the key findings above in order to deliver a solution that better addresses our user’s concerns. This project is a living work-in-progress, and as iterations are made and further testing is conducted, this case study will be updated.
Comments or questions? I’d love to hear them.