An Improved Spotify Social Experience
The Problem
Spotify has an existing social infrastructure that’s not being utilized to its full potential.
DESIGN NOTE:
This is a hypothetical design project based on an article I’ve written in UX Collective:
“Why hasn’t Spotify improved its social features?”
My Role
User Research
Ideation
Wireframing
Userflow
Platforms
Web App
Mobile App
Year
2020
Why?
Understand the goal.
There’s a growing trend on social media platforms where users share their music and podcast recommendations with their audience. Spotify is a great product for listening and finding new music and podcasts, but it lacks any solid social features. Current user profiles lack any purpose other than showcasing a user’s playlists. By improving the social experience for users Spotify could:
Who?
Define the audience.

UNDERSTANDING THE USERS CONTEXT AND NEEDS
IMPACT VS EFFORT
Prioritize, choose idea
- Improve existing Spotify sharing features on outside social media platforms
- Improve the UX for the existing social features on Spotify
- Create a new social experience with new features on Spotify existing-user-profile

Based on the Impact vs Effort exercise solution 2 would be the best approach. Improving Spotify’s existing social features would not introduce anything too unfamiliar with existing users. This prevents any steep learning curves as the features are already familiar. This solution would also be easier for development and execution.
Wireframes

Desktop Wireframes

Mobile Wireframes
Spotify Feed

Introducing Spotify Feed, an area on your Spotify profile where you can see the most recent updates from your friends, artists, and podcasts you follow. Spotify users are now able to share songs, playlists, and podcasts directly on the platform. When an artist and podcast share newly released songs or albums to the feed, their posts appear stylized. This directs users to their newly released content and creates incentives for artists and podcasts to post on the feed.

The new feed was designed to fit with the existing Spotify design language. This can be seen when the feed is displayed on Spotify’s home with previous existing content.

The Spotify Feed also adds a new dynamic to user profiles. Previously only public playlists were shown, but with the addition of a feed to profiles users have a greater incentive and purpose to browse their friends and see what songs, podcasts, or playlists they share.

The feed on mobile is located where users access their podcasts and music. Adding a feed to mobile user profiles also helps improve the mobile profiles dynamic.