The Project
The D&AD New Blood Award included a Spotify brief that involved coming up with a way
for people to share music easily within the app as well as make Spotify a social experience.
The Process
Finding problem areas: New features should be easy to create and user-friendly. While It is easy to come up with common features for an app, the challenge is to identify how said feature can stand out from its competitors and remain unique to Spotify.
Spotify has a share feature. This allows you to share music with friends via external apps.
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Research has concluded that people would like to share music with friends without having to leave the app to do so. The following features introduced portray a way to achieve this, taking into account the existing user profiles on Spotify.
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Another new feature that could enhance social influence and experience is customization. This idea led to the concept of customizable profiles, which could increase Spotify's screen time. The original idea was to create a day and night theme or abstract design aesthetics inspired by the above board. However, these concepts did not align with Spotify's current UI aesthetic and needed to be simplified. I determined that the best approach to address this is through colour expression. Colour can be used to convey vibes and emotions in a minimal yet aesthetically pleasing way.
Feature 1: Music is made to be shared so why not share music directly on Spotify? The new gramophone feature allows you to share songs and playlists with the people you love. The feature allows you to share songs directly with a Spotify user as well as include custom messages and images for a personal touch.
Design Approach
Feature 2: Music is personal and defines who you are. The second feature created allows you to personalise your profile with colours that best suit you or simply match your music’s vibe.
For an added touched, when music is played, colourful orbs appear and move to the beat of the music.
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When designing the icon for the share music feature, I chose a gramophone because Spotify uses vinyl records to showcase their music, which aligns with their retro-modern aesthetic. I drew inspiration from the gradient colors used in Spotify's advertisements and thought it would be great to use these colors for personalizing user profiles.
How the features will work
The Gramophone feature allows you to share music with anyone who has music sharing turned on. You can select a song or playlist for them and customize the cover photo to make it more personal. This feature also lets you add a message before sending the music, such as "This song made me think of you." The customizable profile allows you to choose a color for your profile, and the new feature includes orbs around your profile picture that move to the beat of your music when you press play.