TIDAL: COMMUNITY FEATURE
Bringing a social element to music streaming platforms. Connecting users and improving the app experience.
Role: UX/UI Design
Duration: 8 weeks
Background: there is a highly valuable and untapped resource within all music streaming apps. The lack of a focus on human connection and social interaction means that we are often suggested music based on data rather than how we used to discover music - from people. With a huge user base and potential for users to find new music from eachother, I have implemented a new feature within Tidal music streaming where the Tidal community is the focus. Sharing music should have a social aspect.
Problem: Users of Tidal and similar music streaming platforms find that their personal "Discovery Playlists" typically push them the same few songs on repeat.
How might we leverage the power of Tidal's community to foster a user's ability to branch out their taste and discover more music.
EMPATHY STAGE
To get a better understanding of how user experience on music streaming platforms like Tidal, I conducted 5 remote user interviews with avid listeners. My goal was to get a sense of how people currently use social features on music streaming platforms and guage their interest in making music discovery more of a social process.
I discovered through these interviews that most listeners engage with social features such as listening to other members' playlists as well as sharing their own. I wanted to get a feeling from users about what would drive them to engage with other users.
FigJam File (Interactive)
PERSONAS
Through my interviews and further research, I developed 2 user persona examples of my ideal users. These users are a synthesis of my interview participants while considering different types of users who have varying listening habits.
Figma File (Interactive)
LO-FI WIREFRAMES
After developing user flows, diagrams and personas, I started the Low Fidelity wire framing stage of this new feature. I got feedback from peers and potential users for how they felt about the layout of a few options for the new community page and that informed my next steps.
Figma File (Interactive)
HI-FI PROTOTYPE
I had three potential users provide their insights into the preferred layout and direction for this new Community page on Tidal. Based off of this feedback I started refining the new features UI. I based my decisions off of existing UI elements and tried as best as I could to remain within the current brand identity.
Figma File (Interactive)
ITERATIONS
After conducting 6 user tests on my high fidelity prototype, I moved on to iterations based on tester feedback. I updated the user cards on the Community page to use a more pleasant border as well as tidying up the UI within the cards to better convey a crucial feature - the music compatabillity score that indicates to a user how well your music tastes align. Further I made updates to the Community page design so that it was clear if you were already following another user.
The clickable prototype you can interact with below.
Figma File (Interactive)
Solution: A new Community page where users can view public profiles of other members on Tidal. This feature can drive engagement and improve user experience by giving users access to discover music that they might not know but others are listening to.
Reflection: I wanted this feature to leverage something that I feel is overlooked in modern streaming apps. Users shared frustration in their daily and weekly discovery playlists feeding them the same few songs on repeat. With this feature, users will be able to discover new music through listening to the discovery playlists of other members with similar taste as well as explore thier publicly available playlists.
