Link the Moment

APP Design | Product Design Student Challenge

Discover music and rediscover yourself.

Hosted by

Amazon Music

Responsibilities

Our team worked together on interviews, synthesizing findings, ideation, prototyping, and user testing. I led the visual and interaction parts of the project.

Duration

3 Weeks

Teammates

Josie, Todd

About

Amazon & Pratt Design Challenge is a multi-week design sprint that focuses onexploring the future of Amazon Music. Over the course of several weeks, teams of 2-4 students will work towards reimagining the future of music as they participate in an end to end design sprint centered around Amazon's music streaming service.

Prompt

What is the future of the listeners experience with music and podcasts?
Look 3-5 years out to develop a concept that leverage's Amazon Music'sofferings and reach to bridge digital, in real life, communal, and individualexperiences via the use of new devices and emerging technology.

Design Overview

After conducting thorough interviews, our team discovered that they were disappointed with the monotonous and unvaried music recommendations offered by the system.

To address this issue, we developed a new feature known as "Music Link". This feature displays the number of users listening to the same song simultaneously and indicates the compatibility of their music taste. Users can grab three new songs from strangers' playlists. Furthermore, we have made "Music Link" optional so that users who prefer listening to music alone can deactivate it.

During the interviews, the term "emotion" frequently surfaced. We believe that emotions and memories are closely linked, and that music can serve as a personal diary. "The Moment" allows users to view the playback history of songs. We also translate the cumulative play time numbers into a more meaningful format.

We aspire to facilitate the creation of "intimate and remote" relationships that provide comfort amidst the chaos of daily life.

Process

We followed the Nielsen Norman Group Design Thinking framework for this project.

Empathize

We conducted in-depth interviews with 10 music application users.

Define

We finalized two types of target users from in-depth interviews with 10 music app users, made two personas, and summarized main painpoints.

In our findings, over 90% of users desire to discover new songs on streaming platforms. However, the current recommendation system tends to be repetitive, relying solely on what they usually listen. Without much intention to make social interactions with friends or strangers on music platforms, users focus more on music itself - finding new songs from others, reflect their own nostalgic stories with favorite songs.

Ideate

How might we help users discover new music
and rediscover themselves through music?

Since the current playlists recommended by the app are unable to fulfill users' expectations of discovering new songs, especially in new genres, why not leverage other users’ lists? How can we create a way for users to connect with potential music buddies who share similar tastes? After exploring various options, we decided to incorporate this feature on the music playing page, where users can find others who are listening to the same song at the same time. Featuring with compatibility of tastes and gamified catching process, “Music Link“ offers users a wide range of options for discovering new songs.

Emotions and memories are closely linked, and that music can serve as a personal diary. Providing playing records based on time would help to transport users back to that particular moment, like stepping into a time machine.

Many individuals view music as a personal extension of themselves. Accordingly, we avoid adding any social features like messaging.

Test & Iterate

With 5 participants, we tested our initial prototype and made 3 improvements.

Prototype

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