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How might we increase engagement and retention for spotify?

This case study is primarily research focused

 
 

The situation:

How can we increase engagement?

Spotify is the group lead on streaming music in many countries. Users can browse by parameters such as artist, album, or genre, and can create, edit, and share playlists.

The Challenge:

Social capabilities

Spotify wants to expand on their social capabilities in order to increase engagement and retention.

Goals and Objectives:

New feature

The goal was to develop a new feature for Spotify that would improve engagement and retention in the app and would embed seamlessly within the existing app.

 

My responsibility:

Research | Empathy Map | Persona | How Might We Questions
Crazy 8 | Story board | User Flow | Wireframes | Prototype
Usability Testing

Company

Passion Project

 
 
 
 

Research

 
 

In order to get an in-depth understanding of how people typically use the app and what struggles they encounter, we conducted 2 rounds of interviews. 29 participants from 5 different countries (USA, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, India, Taiwan) were interviewed either remotely or in person.

 
 
 
 
 

Research Goals

For the first round of interviews we focused on the following goals. The assumption was that people used Spotify mainly for music and music sharing.

  • How participants share music

  • Possible barriers when it comes to sharing music

  • Technologies participants integrate when it comes to sharing music

In order to gather data quickly and at low cost, we used a Guerrilla testing approach and set up a sign in a coffee shop in Austin, Texas. Participants outside the U.S. were interviewed via zoom or skype.

 
 

Michael - Austin, USA

 
“I listen to podcasts on my way to work”
 
 

Research Findings

After our first round of interviews we had some insights about specific pain points and concerns when using the app.

 
 

  • Hesitant to share music online Listening to music is a personal experience and most participants didn’t share music actively online or via Spotify

  • Privacy concern

  • Difficult to discover new music outside ones genre
    Throughout there was a sense that it wasn’t easy to discover new music outside one’s genre on Spotify

  • Sharing capabilities are “buried” within the app
    Spotify makes it difficult to share music, and the sharing capabilities on Spotify are “really buried”

  • Sharing is an instant experience
    People had a hard time remembering what they shared, and once it’s shared that there is no access to it anymore

  • Social media burn out Overwhelm and being tired of constant bombardment from social media and push notifications

  • Sharing music via playlists
    Some of the participants, especially the age group 20-30, kept a playlist with friends, stressing that it is a great way to discover new music via friends’ recommendations

  • Lack of notification system Participants complained there is no notification when someone added a song to a playlist

 
 

What was really noticeable was, that most of our participants also used Spotify to find and listen to podcasts. Especially people in their early 20’s to mid 30’s.

Second round of interviews

We set up another round of interviews focusing on audio in general now. We discovered that all our participants used Spotify for music, podcasts as well as audiobooks.

 
 

Matt - Louiseville, USA

“…i knew about podcasts but I didn’t really listen to them outside Spotify…it’s kind of new for me”.

Kyra - Berlin, Germany

“…Leneah has her ‘Kids playlist’ and we listen to a lot of audiobooks….we hardly have any CD’s anymore”.

Will - Fairfax, USA

“I was looking for other podcasts and I found them on Spotify, and that is what I use now…it’s all there…I always use Spotify for music anyway…so it just makes sense”.

 
 

Research findings

After our second round of interviews, the underlying theme that started to emerge was that our participants accessed Spotify in order to listen to/find music, podcasts and audiobooks.

A lot of people in their early 20’s are now being introduced to podcasts on Spotify, especially since Spotify bought two podcasts companies in early 2019 and widened their podcast offering on the platform.

Key takeaway

  • Want to have access to all audio files in one app

  • Lack of sharing capabilities for podcasts and audiobooks

 
 

Empathy map

Throughout the interview process we built an empathy map to look at emerging patterns.

 
 
 
 

  • Want to keep audio files within one app

  • Bring out the sharing capabilities in Spotify
    Some of our participants weren’t aware that Spotify had a sharing option, others thought the sharing options are “too buried within the app”, which at times also resulted in less usage

  • Need for a notification system once the user accesses the app
    Participants talked about that Spotify’s sharing capabilities are rather “passive” and that they wanted to be notified if a song has been added on a playlist once they entered the app

  • No push notification
    Though there is a need for a notification system, participants also expressed that they didn’t like push notification and stated a general “overwhelm” of getting updates on social media, emails, SMS’s

  • To add a feature where people could set up play lists for podcasts and audiobooks

  • Need to discover new music and podcasts based on friends’ recommendations

 
 

Persona

Based on our research findings we developed a persona called Jasper.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Defining the problem space

 
 

After identifying problem areas, we tried to reframe our insights into How Might We (HMW) questions to turn those challenges into opportunities for design by defining the problem space we wanted to work within. We created up to 30 HMW questions and chose one that would guide us through the next steps in the process.

 
 

How might we build an experience for users to exchange and discover music, podcasts and audiobooks within the app and create an active sharing experience to deepen connection between users?

 
 
 
 

Crazy eights

Using our research findings, we generated a number of different ideas within a short period of time using the Crazy eights method. We went through several brainstorming sessions, which lasted 5 minutes each with 5 minute breaks in between.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Storyboard

 
 

We picked one idea, which we thought was the best and was aligned with our HMW question- the creation of an audio timeline.

It was time to bring back our persona “Jasper” who would set the scene. We created a storyboard, in order to create a scenario how the new audio timeline feature could be used.