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Spotify Podcast Feature

Adding a feature on Spotify

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Role

UX/UI Designer
UX Researcher

Methods & Tools

Figma
FigJam

Scope

Adding a feature to Spotify mobile app

Project
Overview

Project Goals

  1. Users:
    Increase podcast and episode credibility. 

  2. Business:
    Increase customer satisfaction scores for podcasts and increase user retention rates

  3. Bringing it all together:Provide a seamless experience for users to quickly grasp critical information about podcasts that will help them build trust and loyalty.

Background

Spotify is a music streaming service in the entertainment industry offering Music, Podcasts & Shows, and Audiobooks.

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Mission Statement: "To unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators.”

1|Research

I wanted to understand how current subscribers, both free and premium users, utilize Spotify and where we can make improvements in order to increase user retention rates.

Poll Survey on Instagram

I decided to go to my Instagram account and post 3 poll questions to narrow down my scope.

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Surprisingly, I received 40+ responses to each question. I asked whether or not they were a Spotify subscriber, what type of device they used the most when using the app, and what category they listened to the most. There was a large skew for cell phone users at 93% and listening to Music at 86%. But the subscription had more of a bell curve with Premium users being the median around 66% and free subscribers and non-Spotify subscribers at 18% and 16% respectively. 

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So I decided to focus on adding a feature to Spotify’s mobile app versus designing for a desktop or tablet device. I noticed that podcasts and audiobooks were very low compared to music listeners but I saw that as a business opportunity. During my research about Spotify, I found that they had future plans to expand their podcast and audiobook areas. Which means identifying podcasts and audiobooks as a business opportunity was on the same path as what Spotify was headed towards!

Competitor Research & Analysis

I started my search for competitors in the “Music & Audio” category in the Play Store app. I narrowed down the competitors to YouTube Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, and iHeart based on their rating within the Top Grossing Chart. At first I thought of doing a SWOT analysis but then I decided to compare advantages/disadvantages for each of the apps. The SWOT analysis would be more beneficial if I was analyzing the company’s services as a whole, but I’m only doing a snapshot at the podcasts section. I’d like to note that I do have premium subscriptions to Spotify and Amazon Prime but not for the rest of the app services (freemiums).

Key Findings

  1. The descriptions of podcasts and episodes is not user friendly and feels overwhelming

  2. Sorting and filtering is limited to only new and old podcasts

  3. Apps with a better podcast landing pages had higher ratings

  4. Reviews and ratings were only available on Spotify

Competitor Analysis.jpg
User Interviews

My next step was to talk to Spotify users, both freemium and premium users, via a remote interview so that I could better understand what motivated them to pick certain podcasts and what challenges they face. I interviewed 5 individuals of which 3 have listened to a podcast before. The interview format started with a couple motivation related questions and then led into an exploratory usability activity as they shared their mobile screen with me.

Exploratory Usability Task Questions:

Setting 1: Imagine you’re on your way to [work/gym] and you decide to open up Spotify.

  1. What do you look for first when you open the app normally? Why?

  2. Imagine you’d like to explore a new music genre, how would you proceed?

Setting 2: Now imagine you’re at home and you decide to open up Spotify.

  1. How would you add new music to a playlist?

  2. How do you manage Your Library? Can you tell me more about why you organize it this way?

Setting 3: Imagine you’ve set a new goal for yourself to learn more about business.

  1. How would you search for a new business podcast that’s interesting to you? Why was this one interesting?

  2. How would you add a podcast episode or channel to a playlist?

Setting 4: Imagine a friend wanted to recommend a song or podcast from Spotify to you.

  1. What would you do?

  2. How would you recommend songs or podcasts to others?

User Needs

  1. Quick access to personalized playlists to user’s tastes (4 out of 5)

  2. Have quick access to large variety of music and podcasts

  3. Verifying podcasts, host’s voice, and topic matches interest (4 out of 5)

  4. Algorithm makes great recommendations and pre-made playlists (4 out of 5)

  5. Popular (recognized) podcasts are available (2 out of 5)

Pain Points

  1. Unsure of credibility of podcast hosts (2 out of 5)

  2. Too many podcasts and don’t know where to start (3 out of 5)

  3. Doesn’t like having to pay more for audiobook (2 out of 5)

  4. Rearranging and organizing library is time consuming

  5. Can’t filter out specific music genre in a “mood” playlist

Research Synthesis: Affinity Mapping

I took all my raw notes from the user interviews and created “sticky notes'' on FigJam in order to create an affinity diagram or map. The affinity map visually provided clusters of patterns which helped me identify key topics.

Key Findings

  1. Listen to music or podcasts in the background while working or commuting (4 out of 5)

  2. Users followed podcasts based on social media influence and popularity

  3. Doesn’t spend time or effort to organize library (5 out of 5)

  4. Chooses “Liked” playlists as first choice when adding new songs (4 out of 5)

  5. Users looked for more descriptive tags like they see for songs

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2|Defining

Using my key findings, user needs, and pain points, I proceeded to identify and define where I could place a new feature for Spotify while addressing both the user’s and business goals. I started with creating a persona and then moved into ideation through HMW statements and mind mapping.

User Personas

I decided to create a user persona, Jenny, to help me reference back to the user’s motivations, goals, and pain points as I start to define and eventually design a solution. There were multiple paths I could take but personally I found enhancing a feature related to the podcast’s description section would be the most valuable for the user.

UX Persona_Jenny.png
Ideation... How-Might-We

Now the journey leads us to ask How-Might-We help Jenny? I focused on one of the problems that users are unsure of a podcast’s credibility to come up with 2 HMW statements:

How might we make users feel confident and trust a podcast?

How might we support users to efficiently evaluate a podcast?

Mind Map

I’d like to explore potential features that could help listeners feel more confident about choosing credible podcasts/episodes, especially if they don’t have enough time to do deep research or know how to accurately identify trustworthy sources.

 

I began with sketching a mind map on the word “credibility” to see if I could get a couple ideas that are essential to addressing the user’s needs.

3|Designing

There were a lot of branches with ideas on the mind map but there was a time constraint and I had to focus on only a few selected areas. So I decided to focus on topics that would make the user feel more confident about evaluating a podcast at a glance while building up their trust for the host.

Low-Fidelity Wireframe Exploration

My first approach was to take a couple key screenshots of Spotify screens and then sketch out ideas on and around them.

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Mid-fidelity Wireframes

Once I felt comfortable enough with my ideas sketched out I moved on to copying 5 screens: podcast home, specific category page (I used Finance), one specific podcast, one episode, podcast “about”, and a new page I would be adding as the “host spotlight page”. I added a couple annotations to help note comments and changes after some feedback from my mentor.

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Hi-fidelity Wireframes

I now jumped into my hi-fidelity wireframes and put in a couple more polishing changes to them after some feedback from group crits and my mentor. There were a total of 6 screens and below you’ll see the original on the left next to the changed screen on the right. Once the wireframes were done I made them into prototypes so that I could do some usability tests.

Highlight 1

Added a third row with some podcast metrics icons.

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Highlight 2

Added an extra icon next to the rating and another feature next to the total play time.

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Highlight 3

The “about” screen was 1 of 2 screens with the most dramatic change. Everything after the paragraph was added.

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Highlight 4

Similarly, this is the second screen with the most dramatic changes as there was no existing screen from Spotify for host biographies.

4|Testing

Unto the testing phase! My goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of the new features to see if Jenny’s, our persona, needs were met. And if they were not then where do the improvements need to be made?

Usability Testing

I recruited 5 participants and conducted my moderated usability tests remotely via Google Meet. I had the users share their screens as we navigated through the prototype on Figma so I could observe and ask questions along the way. The general rundown of the usability test started with building up a rapport with the participants, then a couple pre-test questions related to their experience with Spotify, then task questions, and wrapping up post-test questions regarding their overall impression.

These were the task set questions I asked my participants:

  • Task 1: After exploring the (home) screen just now, what was the first thing you noticed? What do you think would happen if you clicked on those things?

  • Task 2: Now imagine you're in the mood for a new podcast on finance and you decide to look at the Finance category. What do you see at first glance? 

  • Task 3: After looking at all the podcasts, you decide to check out The Ramsey Show. Can you show me how you would evaluate this podcast? 

  • Task 4: What cues do you think would help you find more information about Dave Ramsey the host?

Depending on how the conversation was going, sometimes I wouldn’t need to ask all the questions in a task set because the participant would end up answering without any prompting.

Key Findings

  • Finding the individual host page was very easy. (97% overall satisfaction)

  • Users expressed that the host’s biography page was well structured and gave insightful information, especially the accomplishments and years of experience areas, that increased the host’s credibility. (85% overall satisfaction)

  • All users were intrigued and wanted to know more about each of the individual hosts upon seeing their profile picture, title and years of experience. One user said they wanted to see more “fun little facts” about them. (80% overall satisfaction)

  • 5 out of 5 users mentioned credibility or a word related (e.g. legit, professional, wisdom) to express their thoughts on seeing the host’s years of experience, biography, and/or accomplishments

  • 4 out of 5 users mentioned that seeing metrics (e.g. time length, listeners, followers, rating) influenced their thoughts about the podcast.

Icon identification: As for the success rate of identifying the 3 icons, only the third icon had a passing rate of 4 out of 5 (80%) which I believe is due to the assist of the text “completed”. No users could identify the “podcast host” icon. In fact many thought it looked like a satellite that wasn’t clickable and one user said it reminded him of a “going live” symbol. And as for the “listeners” icon there was confusion as to whether it meant total followers, current live listeners, or total number of people who have listened to the podcast (looking at finance podcast gallery screen).

Revision Prioritization Matrix

During the usability tests, I took some raw notes and then transferred them into FigJam sticky notes. I assigned each user their own color and then each sticky note into 1 of 4 areas: what worked, need to improve, questions, and ideas.

Findings At-a-Glance: I identified a couple key areas with stars that I thought would be the most useful for Jenny, our user.

Iteration Analysis

If you’d like to see the full wireframes with a side-by-side comparison then follow this Figma link.

Impact-Effort Matrix: Then set out to make a matrix that compared the impact to the user versus the effort required to make those changes. In the end I found 3 “must do” changes, 3 maybes, and 1 low priority but it would be nice if I had time.

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Change 1

  • Problem: Users didn't recognize the podcast icon nor that it was an actionable button.

  • Change: Replaced previous host icon with a “more” icon. This CTA will open up a bottom pop-up overlay and show a “View Host” option. The pattern is similar for music category.

Change 2

  • Problem: Users were confusing the headphone icon between "followers" and "listeners".

  • Change: Replaced headphone icon with an icon representing people for “followers”. The icon was also changed on the podcast page on the line with the ratings.

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Change 3

  • Problem: Users did not find value of the metrics for episodes completed and the copywrite was found to be a little confusing.

  • Change: Removed the play icon and changed to the headphones icon. The headphone icon now also matches the landing podcast page.

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Change 4

  • Problem: Users were looking for an icon or a visual indicator to help them identify the type of accomplishment more quickly. 

  • Changes: Added icons next to each accomplishment with respect to the category (e.g. graduation hat for school, trophy for awards, and book for authoring).​

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change-4 rev.png

Change 5

  • Problem: Users were confused if the podcast was being endorsed by others or if the podcast (hosts) were endorsing other podcasts. Users did not show too much interest in endorsements.

  • Change: Rephrased the Endorsements title to "Podcast Collaborations" to resemble the music category for "song radio".

Final Prototype

Conclusion

Achieved Goals

Users felt more confident about the podcast after seeing the host’s biography page.

Challenges

Scoping down and deciding what information users would find trustworthy and helpful on the About and Host pages.

Next Steps

If I had the opportunity to recommend some potential opportunities for Spotify to take:

  • Create personalized podcast playlists with recommended listening order (e.g. financial literacy for beginners)

  • Extent and expand podcast categories to teachers and professors (EdTech industry)

  • Provide more opportunities for fans to support/donate to artists

  • Design an exclusive Spotify audio system

© 2024 UX Designs by Kat Lehmann 

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