Case Study: Spotify’s NEW Shuffle Feature!

For this case study I’d like to guide you through my process of creating a new (fictious) feature for the Spotify iOS application. The task was to create a feature for shuffling not only the songs within one playlist, but shuffling multiple playlists at once. E.g. say the user wants to listen to some of their pop-, some of their rock- and some of their metal playlists, but doesn’t want to create a whole new playlist with everything included. The feature should be integrated into Spotify’s brand design — everything else was up to me!

After a little deep dive into Spotify’s existing features, i gathered that the user can:

• create their own playlists
• find pre-made playlists by spotify or other users
• create a queue of individual songs (but can not export the queue into a separate playlist (!))
• set shuffle for playlists, albums and artists.

When I first read the task, to me — as an intensive Spotify user — the feature seemed very useful and obvious. I was even wondering, why this feature was not there yet and had multiple ideas to bring it even a step further by creating playlist groups, naming them or saving and exporting queues.

With this excitement I went into the research phase and did a quantitative survey around Spotify users in my environment. I asked about their usage behavior, what they like- and dislike about the app and how they like to listen to music.The results turned out quite different than expected: about 60% of the participants answered, that they don’t create their own playlists or spend time creating queues, but rather use pre-made playlists and listen to Spotifyˋs suggestions. When I asked specifically for a playlist shuffle feature, people were not necessarily excited — in fact, they found it unnecessary and expected that they wouldn’t use it.

Again research had proven to me that the designer is not the user and you can never expect results. I started reconsidering the user persona I was imagining and started digging more into the research about Spotify. I found out that they already hold the biggest market share in the music streaming industry, around 35%. Apart from that, around half of their users are subscribed to the free plan, meaning limited access and advertisement.

From this I gathered that the goal behind the feature would not be on gaining more general or free users, but rather increasing the number of paying users who need more features inside the app. The target group I therefore defined were music enthusiasts and people who work in the music industry, such as DJs, producers, musicians. I reconsidered my user persona and got a clearer vision of the Feature itself.

After ideating tasks of my new feature, i knew that I needed some additional Information: a name for the new feature, in order for the the users to navigate inside the app, a playlist identifier, meaning information of not only the song but also the playlist where the song comes from and accessibility from everywhere in the app.

After being stuck on the naming for a while, I conducted a quick survey amongst some fellow UX Designers as well as Spotify users and gave them many naming ideas to choose from. The winner was pretty clear and came out as: “Mix List” — a mixture of the queue and playlists.

For my Mid Fi Prototypes I created 3 User Flows:

• Adding a Playlist to Mix List, starting from the personal playlist library
• Deleting a Playlist from Mix List, starting from the song view
• Adding multiple Playlists at once using the public playlist library.

In order to test my designs, i found some DJ’s and musicians to interview. I showed them my Mid Fi creations and followed their usage behaviour. The results helped me to improve the design before starting with my High Fi Designs.

• I added a “List Mix” Symbol (before you would access the List Mix over the menu or over the queue)
• The icon for “current song from a playlist” including the playlist cover and the song cover was clear
• The descriptions and titles of the new features were clear.
• I converted all my designs into a Hi-Fi Design and made some more improvements.

Here’s my finished Design:

Final Thoughts:

• User researched showed, that my target group is not the general user, as this group would not necessarily benefit from the new feature. Instead, I focused on improving for more intensive users, such as musicians, DJs and music enthusiasts, as they would actually make use of the feature.
• Keeping the menu and interface simple while adding a new feature is possible and when in doubt, test with the user.
• Clear naming and icon identifiers are needed to differentiate between multiple features (mix list <> queue)
• The accessibility from all parts of the app must always be kept in mind in order to include the feature well into the final product.

I loved this project and learned a lot — feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Henriette Who?