Spotify Groups Tab Feature
UI/UX Design, Mobile App, Design Research
Role: Design Researcher, Mobile App Designer
Tools: Figma
Timeline: February - March 2024
The Groups Tab is a new Spotify feature that I worked on for Sophie Hodara’s Interaction Design Principles course that focused on creating a Spotify feature to strengthen how users connect with one another. After conducting research that centered around the question “what value will a social feature on Spotify offer its users?, I found that the average Spotify user only interacts with a few of their close friends on the app and don’t like how all of their followers can see their activity.
I chose to develop a feature that gives friend groups a centralized hub to view each others’ listening activity and collaborated playlists/blends. Only members added to a Group can view this content, creating a more intimate way for friends to connect over music.
Initial Research/Brainstorming
What value will a social feature on Spotify offer its users?
For the research portion of this project, I worked with 2 other classmates to identify the way users currently interact with one another on Spotify and what features from social media apps they enjoy/dislike.
User research/fieldwork: conducting 4 interviews about social networks
Social-UX task analysis: find and document the functionality of three social media platforms
Bright points:
Easy to share unique content with friends
Personalized playlists and suggestions
Blends are a step in the right direction
Social media accounts serves as an accurate representation of self
User Research Takeaways
Pain Points
Balance between social and private selections (music listened to/likes/comments)
Easy to engage in social media fights
Friends content is a pain to find on Spotify now
Less social features = bad, losing the community aspect of music
Competitive Usability Audit
Ideation
Developing How Might We Research Questions
After conducting user and UX research, my group and I created different research questions to brainstorm potential project ideas.
I decided to focus on “How might we replicate friend circles for Spotify?”. Friend circles is a feature on Instagram, Snapchat, and formerly X that allows users to add certain followers to a private group to view.
Moving forward in the ideation process, I focused on determining how what a new tab on Spotify could be comprised of to create an intimate space for friends to share music.
Persona and Storyboard
Next, I developed a user persona and storyboard with potential UI frames. This helped me determine what kind of people would find value in a Groups tab and how they would interact with it.
The persona I developed was based on how interviewees mentioned they preferred to share more personal content on social media only with their closest friends.
Paper Prototype
With an idea of key UI frames, I created paper prototypes of the wireframes for my main workflow: creating a new group and finding a playlist on the page that added members have collaborated on.
Lo-fi Wireframes
After conducting 3 user tests and refining the workflow, I began to design Lo-fi wireframes on Figma. My goal was to figure out the current buttons on Spotify so creating a Group does not have a difficult learning curve for users.
After designing my Lo-fi wireframes, I conducted 2 user tests and found key areas of improvement for my final prototype.
Moving the Groups tab button from the Home page to Your Library page. Content such as Blends, Albums, and Playlists are found there and the top bar feels too far away/inconvenient.
Adding wireframes to show other Groups features besides viewing playlists.
Spotify profiles are normally circular, group members profile pictures should be changed to match this.
Final Prototype
Try out my final prototype here!
The final part of this project was to create a final prototype. This final prototype as a realistic depiction of how this new feature would be integrated into Spotify and how users interact with it. I moved the location of the Groups tab and incorporated a listening activity section. I wanted all the steps a user took to create a new Group to be consistent with Spotify’s current UI.
