The project started by doing primary and secondary research with no specific agenda other than understanding how people share music. I focused on success stories, frustration and pain points of users when sharing music. The main goal was to find a gaps in the experience that can be bridge with better design, UI or architecture of the app.


Primary Research: unscripted interview with users
Secondary Research: look at competitors and compare features.

Before jumping on interviews, I compared the main music streaming applications in the market. This gave solid background to understand better the input given by the participants.

Users pointed out that the biggest frustration was not being able to share music in a universal platform and many just rely on YouTube, rather than actual music apps. Another pain point was that sharing music require users to switch to a different app. Many times, sharing music occurs within the context of a conversation that happens via text. In a conventional way, users must close the messenger app and open whatever streaming app they have, search for the song, tap the sharing options, copy the link, close the streaming app, open messenger again and send the link hoping the other user can actually open it if they have the same streaming app open. There are way too many steps for a simple task.

Many users pointed out that the biggest frustration was not being able to share music in a universal platform and many just rely on YouTube, rather than actual music apps. Another pain point was that sharing music require users to switch to a different app. Many times, sharing music occurs within the context of a conversation that happens via text. In a conventional way, users must close the messenger app and open whatever streaming app they have, search for the song, tap the sharing options, copy the link, close the streaming app, open messenger again and send the link hoping the other user can actually open it if they have the same streaming app open. There are way too many steps for a simple task.

I started this process by creating a persona, Julia, based on all the interviews. I focused on patterns and common paint points from all participants. After creating the persona, I created an affinity map that can tell more about the main concerns and goals of the Julia. I also put attention to the context in which Julia shares music. This is indeed very important, because many participants said that they have to use more than one app to share music, like YouTube app, text app, email app, streaming app, etc.

After gathering all the information from interviews, I visualized the data in two graphs and created problem statements that can lead to potential solutions to the problem. The visualized data helped me to frame the question to start developing a solution.

The next step was ideation. I took the main problem statements, or the ones that I thought were stating the right problem to solve and created a series of solution using the Crazy 8 technique. I sketched very fast potential solutions to the problem statements. I sketched good and bad ideas. I would take a break, and then come back to do another round of fast sketches. I did these 4 to 5 times. By the end of this process, I started to have a clear idea on how I could solve the problem and frustration of sharing music.

I used storyboards in a similar way as the crazy 8 technique. I sketched storyboards very fast 3 times. I took breaks between each round to have time to think about the previous storyboard. This allowed my brain to think better about the next round of storyboard and crate a story that identify user task that exist within this feature framework. By the third storyboard, I realized that the solution was to have a Spotify feature that can exist within iMessenger or Android text and treat this feature in a similar way as gif images that can be played inside the text dialog box.

I reinforced the main idea of the Spotify feature with a user flow. After finishing the storyboard, I have a clear idea of user’s goal and the steps to complete a task, in this case sharing music with the user flow does not focused on pages that the user goes through to complete a task. Instead, it visualizes the views that the user goes through within two pages.

After finishing the user flow, I worked on wireframes to go through the step needed to complete the task. These wireframes have more resolution than normal wireframes, because I was able to use UI kits from iOS, iPhone and Spotify. I created two wireframes for users who have Spotify and the ones who do not have Spotify installed in their phones. After that, I run a usability test to see how users were able to complete the task. The task was to play music that was shared with them via text. One of the main dilemmas was how much of this feature should shows Spotify or iMessenger UI elements.

After, thinking more about it, I decided that the song that was shared, should be contained within aniMessenger bubble so it follows the rules of any text, but within that text bubble that contains the song, I used Spotify UI components. Also, non-Spotify user see the content in a slightly different way. For non-Spotify users, the feature would let them play a limited amount of songs, but it would include a link to download Spotify app in their phones to enjoy all the features.

After running the usability test, I made changes based on participants feedback. The main feedback was focused on the size of the buttons. Some participants did not see feasible to have buttons arranged horizontally.Therefore, I organized them vertically to avoid pressing the wrong button. Other users, pointed out that the Spotify content was missing some UI component such a linear gradient background that matches the color of the album cover.  After collecting the input, I made changes in the UI of theSpotify feature, to make it more modern and Spotify alike.