SPOTIFY COLLECTIONS
CONTEXT
4-week project for a Senior User Experience Design Course at Simon Fraser University.
TEAM
Brianna Quan
Keith Leung
Michelle Swolfs
Newton Nguyen-Le
MY ROLE
Interaction and Experience Design, Project Management, Research, Copywriting
TOOLS
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
Premiere
AT A GLANCE
A note-taking and sharing solution for engaged podcast listeners, Spotify Collections bridges the value gap between the music and podcast sides of Spotify, by adding notes, collections, and transcript features to the Spotify podcast player.
THE CLIENT
Spotify is known as one of the leaders in music streaming. Currently, they are trying to position themselves as the go-to podcast platform to expand their presence in the audio industry. In 2019, Spotify began by acquiring Gimlet, a narrative podcasting company, and Anchor, a podcast creator platform. Additionally, in late 2020, Spotify signed with several of the largest podcasters for exclusive streaming rights, including The Joe Rogan Experience. Spotify is currently the most used podcast platform, but with big names like Amazon and Google entering the market, they need to maintain their position.
THE BRAND
So how do podcasts fit into Spotify's brand? Let's start with their brand tagline — Music for Everyone. This tagline is supported by their brand values of:
1. Collaborative: Creators, consumers, and everyone in between
2. Personal: Tailored experiences
3. Innovative: Quick to adapt
Spotify emphasizes that "We're all Spotify" which Includes creators, consumers, and everyone in between. here is an example of their inclusivity, Spotify has a feature where they can curate a playlist even for your pets.
Spotify includes Tailored experiences such as creating personalized playlist tailored to your music taste.
They are quick to adapt to new things and become the best at what they intend to do. This ad illustrated as a meme shows Spotify is quick to adapt their communication to create that connection with their audience.
Spotify emphasizes that "We're all Spotify" which Includes creators, consumers, and everyone in between. here is an example of their inclusivity, Spotify has a feature where they can curate a playlist even for your pets.
THE STAKEHOLDERS
Want to increase their market share to differentiate themselves from competing platforms and to become the top audio platform.
Want a larger share of the market and be innovators and pioneers of the sector.
The majority of listeners engage with podcasts to find out new information.Other reasons include seeking inspiration or simply wanting to be entertained
Want to increase their market share to differentiate themselves from competing platforms and to become the top audio platform.
Our research revealed 6 main stakeholder groups and we worked to understand how they were all connected and impacted each other, with a deeper focus on the podcast consumer.
UNDERSTANDING THE PODCAST CONSUMER
Through primary and secondary research, we discovered more about the podcast consumer, their motivations and pain points.
Our research indicated a discovery problem when it came to finding and discussing podcasts. We conducted a survey with 77 respondents, 94% of whom consisted of 18–34 years old, that supported our secondary research. When it came to discovering podcasts, 53% discovered through friends/word of mouth, 64% discovered through social media and only 10% discovered in-app. For post podcast listening activities, 38% discussed podcasts with family or friends and 35% said they'd find more information online. Other trends were that Spotify’s library was generally good, Spotify’s discoverability was generally poor, and participants enjoyed having music and podcasts in the same place. While this study was not conclusive, we learned that there was definitely a social component to podcasting. We asked ourselves, How can Spotify offer an engaging podcast experience that extends beyond the end of each episode?
PRECEDENTS
We located a few precedents that are creating the space for social experiences that revolve around media such as video, podcasts, and books. Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces foster live online discourse and offer interactive and spontaneous experiences. Twitch Clips also allows users to share their favourite moments on a broadcast quickly and easily. These three precedents helped us to identify an opportunity to create a social experience for the continuously growing medium of podcasting.
INITIAL FRAMING
With our research in mind, we asked ourselves: How might we foster micro-communities during the pre and post-podcast experience directly within the Spotify player in order to encourage discovery and connect curious minds?
Our insights pointed us to three different opportunity spaces:
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Reduce the cognitive overhead of selecting a podcast (provide tangible value related to ease of use)
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Foster curiosity and excitement for discourse surrounding podcasts (intangible value)
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Create an intimate and safe space for podcast groups (aspirational value of belonging and being a creative member)
OPPORTUNITIES
Based on our problem space, we brainstormed interventions that aligned with Spotify's brand while also creating a premium experience for podcast listeners. Through an audit of the podcast platform, we narrowed down the following ways we could tailor Spotify’s audio player to better suit the needs of podcast listeners in order to increase customer engagement and solidify Spotify as an audio leader:
1. User Interface Revamp
2. Transcripts
3. Shownotes
4. Previews/Clips
CONFIRMING THE VALUE
To further ideate and confirm the value of these features, we entered a Google Design Sprint, with the following question in mind. Will streamlining the podcast consumer experience into the Spotify app establish Spotify as a podcast consumption destination for frequent podcast users? Our overall goal was the bring Spotify's podcast experience up to the standard of their music experience, thus making them the ultimate audio platform. During the sprint, we saw an opportunity that these features had to not only affect the direct consumption experience but also zoom out to the pre and post-listening experience to aid with discovery and discourse. Podcasts are a very different format than music, resulting in a different engagement experience, something affirmed during our user testing. If Spotify aimed to maintain their podcast dominance, they must adapt their player to be the best for podcasts in order to not miss out on potential podcast customers.
During the user testing stage of our prototypes, we discovered a major insight - there was a clear divide between those who fully engaged with podcasts and those who passively listen to podcasts while doing other activities. Engaged listeners often had alternative apps or routines to take notes or share content, and it just “made sense” for those to be put into Spotify for a streamlined experience. Some of them used other podcasting apps, and these features would encourage them to make the change to using Spotify. This directly answered our sprint question and gave us the confidence to move forward with the concept.
THE PROPOSAL
The absence of supported experience is a missed opportunity for Spotify to act upon its brand values on the podcast side. We introduce Spotify Collections - a note-taking and sharing solution for engaged podcast listeners. This solution aims to:
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Providing value to listeners by giving them the features they need on one platform
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Reduce cognitive overhead by streamlining the listening process through new interactions
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Help Align Spotify podcasts to the brand values presented in the rest of the platform
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1. NOTES
Our first feature, Notes, helps listeners engage with audio in a new way by providing them the tools to bookmark, save, or share clips while consuming podcasts. The goal of notes is to enhance the perceived value of Spotify's podcasts, and reduce the cognitive overhead of using multiple apps for related tasks.
To ease and streamline the process of users familiarizing themselves with the notes icon, an onboarding popup appears when the listener opens a podcast for the first time.
The 'Your Notes' page is home to notes that have not been sorted into a collection. Here you'll find tags that help with filtering through the content. Within a specific podcast episode, users will find the 'episode notes' page. Here, timestamps of the episode's notes facilitate easy access to the clipped sections of the podcast.
The audio clipping tool quickly snips a section of the podcast to include into your notes. However, listeners can also exclude creating a clip to make general notes. Users also have the option to note accompanying thoughts. Adding a tag helps with sorting, before you save or add to a collection.
When listeners find themselves consuming a podcast with their phone locked, our addition to the lock screen mini-player allows listeners to instantly add a bookmark for later, or select 'create a note' to be directed into the app. They can add a bookmark with their headphones by performing a short press, followed by a press and hold until they hear a beep.
Bookmarks are for those who would like to mark a section of a podcast without dedicating time to create a note. They act as timestamps to revisit on the episode notes page. If a note is created for a bookmarked timestamp, the bookmark will automatically be taken out of this section. Alternatively, users can manage bookmarks by long pressing a timestamp.
2. COLLECTIONS
The next feature, Collections, are playlists of notes that can be private, collaborative, or public. Collections uses Spotify's existing treatment of their social aspects: intimate and collaborative. Collections aims to enhance the value of notes by creating opportunities for intimate collaboration and aligning Spotify's podcast experience with the rest of Spotify.
Collections can be accessed from within your library, where the rest of your playlists exist. The automatically generated cover art is unified with Spotify's art direction through its' simple bold elements and vibrant contrasting colours. Listeners also have the choice to publicly publish their collections, share them with friends, or the world.
3. INFORMATION CARDS
The last feature, Information Cards, was introduced to help listeners connect with podcast content in alternative ways by enhancing the podcast player in alignment with Spotify's existing player interface. By making episode details accessible and creating a space for creators to include the transcripts and timestamps of their show, listeners will have the tools they need to effectively consume podcasts.
Three tabbed card on the bottom is intuitive for Spotify users and provide them with supplementary information without having to navigate to a different page. With a quick tap, you can explore the episode resources to connect with the podcast or check out time stamps to get an outline of the podcast topics.
A live transcript is also available on the cards, providing accessibility and captions for those who need them. Expanding to the full view includes the current chapter of the podcast and is for additional guidance. From this screen, listeners can hold down on interesting sections to create a note if they desire.
VALUE PROPOSITION
For Spotify: Through Collections, Spotify’s brand perception also grows from just a music platform to a music and podcast platform due to their ability to facilitate the podcast consumption journey beyond just listening. Engaged Listeners also transition to Spotify due to the more holistic experience, increasing ad revenue and potentially premium subscriptions.
For the listener: From our user testing, we confirmed the value of Spotify Collections for the engaged listener. They described that the tools would add value to their experience and potentially cause them to switch to Spotify from other applications.
REFLECTION
This was an intense project completed over a span of 4 weeks, with countless iterations and endless meetings across different time zones. As the final project I completed during my undergraduate, I was really proud of my team and I's ability to create a polished and meaningful intervention for Spotify's podcast platform. Creating a social aspect to a digital platform without turning it into another social media platform was challenging but we managed to execute a balanced intervention.I felt pride and joy during conducting user testing, where several participants thought that our proposal and intervention already existed on the Spotify platform, despite them just using the prototype we created. This really confirmed the value of our design, as well as other participant testimonials. This project also opened my eyes to the intersection of technology, business, design and experience as there was a lot of business research that went into it and while the user was at the forefront of the journey, so was the client.