Timeline
September-December
2022
Role
UX Designer
Ui Designer
Team
5 People
Overview
A feature allowing connecting sharing and interaction amongst friends using a music mood feature.
Problem
Music Is Life
When I listen to music, I want others to know what I'm feeling, so I can express who I am better, but I can't do that because:
Music platforms don't have enough ways to express your musical taste other than making playlists
Creating playlists about one theme or story can take too much effort
Songs are linked to specific memories/emotions but there's no way to track them.
Background
Music Mood is a weekly reflection of you
I originally thought users just wanted to connect with friends by sending songs to one another. However, my mind changed after interviewing friends who kept mentioning it lacked personalization and depth.
My user research showed that the music discovery and aura features were heavily used but could be expanded upon. The real problem was that users didn’t feel as though there was an element of expression or personal details involved in sharing and on their profiles.
Music Mood is a weekly updated playlist and feature that takes your weekly top 25 most listened-to songs and generates a color mood that reflects your song tastes. The song gradient combines two of the most played “moods” and is accessible from the main page, search discovers a page, and from profile/settings.
To learn more about the specific weekly mood, going into the weekly playlist will allow you to click on the main gradient square and a story-style pop-up will explain the correlation between certain moods and songs.
Ideation
A new music-sharing experience
Interaction: Sharing should be more customizable based on the music that is being shared
Personal connection: Connect memories or vibes of songs to another visual form
Streamlining Music Sharing: Provide an easier way to access and visualize shared songs
Shapes and Colors: The feature should incorporate many visual elements with shapes and colors.
Prototyping
We explored some solutions to these questions in wireframes.
Looking at the pros and cons of each solution, I decided to go with Aura feature as it could be easily attached to a profile. Going forward, I made sure to design the feature to accomplish the goal without taking away from the functionality of the app.
I also created a user persona and began to map out the information hierarchy. The hierarchy would show how the music mood feature would be implemented but also emphasize its connection to other functions.
Design
Crafting the Interface
The entry point for Music Mood would be from the home search or library screen. Though the ‘Home’ tab offers the most relevant entry point, existing features like “Blend” tend to have multiple entry points. This way users could discover the feature more naturally and have integration become a part of everyday app use.
Finished Product
THe Style Guide
Conclusions + Results
Talking to users, I was pleasantly surprised by how many times I heard about how personal music can be for friendships and mood.
I hope Music Mood can further this by helping users find new music and new friends along the way. This project was also in collaboration with a great team of like-minded students. Working as a team was a pleasure both for accountability and feedback on design work.
