Adding a new feature to Spotify

Nowadays Spotify offers a lot of features, like a music player, podcasts, connections with friends, also you can create your own library and share your favorite songs with your friends.

But what if we add a new feature?

Today I’m going to speak about the Karaoke feature for Spotify App.

Research

I sent a survey for people who like music and while I was waiting for the answers I decided to check up for the Brand Attributed and other Competitors.

We can see that the Spotify App is already on a good path and it’s very popular among users. Spotify is a very ambitious, diverse, and social community.

I checked all kinds of music apps, like Apple Music, Youtube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer. But also I had a look at the most popular Karaoke Apps to get some ideas and compare the features they have nowadays. So, I could get more inspired for my project.

Finally, I got 23 responses for the survey and 4 more for the interview. I found out the next information:

• generally, people like singing with friends as alone too.
• mostly the people like singing in a car, at home, and in the shower too :)
• the main part of people I asked, already use the Spotify app as a music player.
• almost all the people feel more confident having lyrics for singing.

But also I got negative answers, like:

• some people don’t like singing because they feel shy
• some prefer to avoid crowded places
• a very small part of asked don’t like singing in general.

Having all this information I moved it to an affinity diagram to see more clearly the point I need to consider when working on the app.

So, I had enough data to create my User Persona. Which will be a singer, social and would have a lot of friends to spend time with.

Persona Profile

As we can see, Marta Murillo already uses the Spotify app, and she enjoys singing and connects with friends.

My question was: “How could I help people enjoy Karaoke with friends or alone”?

User Flow

I created the User Flow to see clearly what kind of paths she/ he could have when navigating and activating the Karaoke Feature. The “Happy” path would be the next:

1. Choose the best song from the library
2. Activate the Karaoke feature
3. Choose the option “invite friend”
4. Select a friend from the list
5. Move to Karaoke player after your friend accepted the invitation.
6. Finish the session

So, as MVP of course, we could also start creating only a “Single Karaoke” feature just to check if this option is working.

But I started ideating on the group karaoke feature. It wasn’t easy, cause I just had 4 days to develop the feature on my own.

Prototyping

Prototyping

I started doing my Lo-fi on paper as the easiest way to change any kind of elements. I had many options but I chose the simplest one.

After taking the Mid-fi prototype to test on the Maze platform, I received some data from users, as unclear steps because of some buttons.. So I decided to delete these buttons and this way simplify the app more. Though, I added two more screens.

First of all, I added a ‘microphone’ button which takes the user to the song list page and she/he can choose the songs to sing in the Karaoke format. After choosing the song(s), the user is able to choose a friend and sent him the invitation.

After the invite is accepted by the chosen friend, you will be given the button to join the Karaoke session, where you click on “Start” and the session will be On.

So, pretty easy steps which can make song lovers life a bit happier :)

Next Steps

• Get feedback on Hi-fi prototype
• Add some alternative flow using the app’s menu for example.
• Practice more UI.

That’s all for today! Have a nice weekend :)