Vinyl. Boomboxes. Walkmen. CD players. MP3 players. Napster. Pandora. YouTube. SoundCloud. iTunes. Spotify. Spotify has  synthesized some of the key aspects spanning decades of listening to music into one service, where users can find, organize, and listen to music (or other audio) they love; discover new music; and share their listening inclinations with friends and the general public. One thing it doesn’t highlight: the social aspect of listening to music.

And what even is a social feature, when it comes to a music-streaming platform like Spotify? To start this project, I began by researching what "social features" already exist on the platform. I identified 4 core features:

• Making shared playlists with others
• Viewing profiles and adding friends
• Starting a Jam and listening to music in real time
• Creating blends and other special playlists curated by Spotify

The next step was to conduct user interviews. In order to analyse the value of social features in terms of user experience, I grouped up with a few of my classmates and interviewed 4 different candidates, each with different backgrounds and app preferences. These user interviews helped me gain initial insight into what users want, and their bright points and pain points with existing social applications. I also understood how various users use Spotify and other music streaming services.

I started fleshing out a detailed user persona that would guide my design choices when I began storyboarding and wireframing.

The next step was to start ideating how to tackle the How Might We question. I used sticky notes to start rapid-firing ideas and picked out 6 of the best ones. From these, I chose 2 to further expand on by drawing up some basic storyboards and wireframes.

Spotify users can make personal or shared Memory Boxes where they can post photos/thoughts like a diary and every month/season Spotify will notify them of a recap with the posted content as well as their listening history that month, to remind them of their memories! Users can also heart (favourite) a Memory Box and see an archive of past Memory Boxes almost like a capsule of the past when they feel nostalgic

Spotify can create an in-person and digital experience through a pop-up shop or a Museum with exhibits of iconic music over the years in forms of vinyl records, cassette tapes and listening booths. Each section would have a QR code that visitors can scan that is connected to the app where they can comment on the song and how it evokes memories for them. They can also see other users’ memories and comments.

I decided to pick Idea #2 because it was more unique and impactful. I started designing simple paper prototypes so that I could study user behaviours and iron out the UI of my application.

After collecting all the feedback from my user testers, I began working in Figma and developed a low fidelity prototype. This prototype was also user-tested and I incorporated all the feedback into my revisions.

Two key pieces of feedback were:

After getting feedback from user testers and classmates about the low fidelity prototypes, I created high fidelity prototypes on Figma to create a better version of my idea for this project. The project was then presented in class, and I received helpful feedback. I was also able to create an immersive experience in class where other classmates could interact with my prototype much in the way users were intended to interact with the final product.

Here are the 3 mock "Museum Signs" I designed for the immersive experience during critique in my class. I printed and put up these signs so that my classmates and professor could interact with my app in a way beyond the screens of their phone.

This project taught me how to create a feature that drew inspiration from and satisfied the needs of users. By placing users at the core of my ideation process, I was able to hone my human-centric design skills. This helped me create the frameworks for an interesting and interactive experience. This project allowed me to creatively play with the concept of what “social” features on digital platforms could look like.

It was interesting to combine a digital experience with tangible items like QR codes on printed “exhibits”. This allowed me to explore creating interactions within the prototype on Figma, but also within the classroom where I was presenting my work! I was able to brush up on my user-testing and wireframing skills as well, through the iterative process of building prototypes.

Some of my key learnings were:

• Placing my prototype within the context of a phone screen made me think about the relationship between different elements on the screen, and pushed me to find simple ways to nudge users towards interacting with these elements on their screen.
• Since phone screens are relatively small, I learnt how to effectively use space, work with symbols and icons as signifiers and use simple taskflows in order to make the interaction as smooth and error-free as possible.

I think the concept overall was pretty successful; it was very exciting to watch my classmates interact with my printed exhibits and then navigate the prototype. It showed me that the combination of a digital and physical experience was exciting for users. I also think the idea of using a social feature where users can connect through shared memories associated with music was interesting, because it is an ode to the very human aspects of enjoying art and music.

The major areas of improvement would be:

• Fine-tuning the wireframes and populating the Memory Museum feed with more music categories.
• Figuring out where this Memory Museum feature could live on Spotify post its release; maybe famous songs could have an icon that would help users access this feature and gain a new understanding of the song’s relevance and history.