Weekly product design exercise #1
Alright, so since I had a bit of extra time in my hands and was craving for some exercises that could help me upgrade my product thinking and problem-solving process, I came across those somewhat famous Weekly Product Design Exercises with some challenges for us to try to quickly solve in a limited amount of time.
I picked a random challenge and gave myself 1h to dissect it and see what solution I could come up with.
Briefing
Improve the Spotify mobile experience. That’s it, that’s the goal.
Product Thinking Process
Spotify is a gigantic streaming platform available for numerous devices with countless audio features and services. It reached 144 million premium users and 320 million monthly active listeners in 2020 and has been voted the best streaming service 3 years in a row. It has a well-constructed multi-device interface, being a hugely popular example when it comes to responsivity and consistency.
That being said, what problems could users be experiencing while using Spotify’s mobile app? Who is experiencing them and why are they problems to begin with? And what benefits could the possible solutions bring to users and to the company as well? Let’s take a look.
Spotify’s audience ranges from listeners to artists to businesses. For this exercise, let’s focus on listeners. The streaming’s most prominent listeners are probably from a more youthful user base, up to 35 years old, and let’s assume that they listen to music/podcasts 2–3 hours on a daily basis.
With that in mind, let’s think deeper about the situations in which those listeners could be using the mobile app and what problems they could be facing.
I think we can all agree that regardless of what we are doing, it does get better with music. So if we are dishwashing, showering, driving, exercising, or whatever, it’s for sure better if we are listening to our favorite jam or that laugh-out-loud podcast.
But let’s dive in further, what do all these scenarios have in common?
Exactly: our hands are busy. If our hands are busy, wet, or in a possible life-threatening scenario if distracted, it makes it a thousand times trickier to shuffle through music or search for that perfect soundtrack we just thought about.
And why is that problem relevant, from the user’s and company’s point of view?
- It could increase the company’s empathy toward its listeners, being that they are having their needs attended at all times;
- Could possibly increase the number of listeners;
- Listeners would be experiencing an overall better, easier, and well-thought (and safer too) product;
- Extra and well-thought features could enhance listeners relationships with the brand itself;
Solution
So, how can we improve the mobile experience in those situations for Spotify’s listeners? Here’s s possible solution I came up with that seemed the most fitting for this specific problem:
- An artificial intelligence-powered voice-controlled virtual assistant from Spotify itself that could assist users by voice interaction in completing tasks that they initially needed manual actions to make happen. The virtual assistant could also suggest to listeners other similar tunes through its highly developed algorithm, help them identify a song by humming, and build queues at command, for example.
And how would that work?
For now let’s call the virtual assistant Spot, your own little audio buddy.
- Hands-free voice-only interaction necessary at the moment;
- Easy, quick, and fun;
- The technology already exists and could be optimized/improved by Spotify’s own algorithm features;
I decided to give myself some extra time to see what quick UI design I could come up with for this solution’s prototype.
Finally, how can we possibly measure the product’s success? I believe we could track:
- Engagement — by measuring how often listeners interact with the feature;
- Conversion — by measuring the percentage of listeners who use the feature;
- Retention — by measuring how often the action of using the feature is taken by listeners;
That’s the result for this challenge, super fun to come up with, definitely deeper work would be necessary if Spotify ever decided that “Hey, that’s an excellent idea, Alex…”, but overall nice exercise for me as well. I’ll be sure to include these weekly exercises in my routine.
Thank you for joining me and hope you’ll follow me around :)
