Spotify Content Discovery Hub
Redesigning Spotify’s UX to make music discovery smarter, faster, and more personal.
Role
Product Designer
TEAM
Jordan Mak (Design)
Joseph Lee (PM)
TIMELINE
Aug – Dec 2024
TOOLS
Figma
01.
Context
Spotify, with over 626 million monthly users, offers vast music content — but many users find music discovery overwhelming, repetitive, and inefficient. As avid Spotify fans ourselves, we saw an opportunity to enhance Spotify's UX by simplifying content discovery and increasing personalization.
Through a series of research methods, we identified a new solution: the Concept Discovery Hub.
The Challenge
02.
something somethning
How do users discover and categorize music?
How can UI and AI design improve personalization and discovery?
03.
Research Methods
Heuristic Evaluation
Using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics ↗, we assessed core pain points in Spotify’s home and playlist interfaces, discovering the following.
Poor visibility of playlist tooling (ex: add, edit)
Unintuitive description for daylist descriptors
Unexpected + button behavior
Navigating "back" resets the scroll position
Survey
“I wish there was a more centralized ‘hub’ for discovering music where I could look at the various playlists Spotify recommends.”
04.
Hypothesis
Spotify has an ample amount of content discovery avenues – AI DJ, daylist, Smart Shuffle, Daily mixes, you name it. But why do we experience friction searching for and using these tools? Certainly, content discovery relies on algorithms, which may not be directly within our design purview. Instead, how can we focus on implementing UI features as design solutions that will streamline content discovery?
Proposal
Creating a dedicated space for content discovery will help users more easily identify and access relevant tools in their music journey.
05.
Design Solution
See prototype
06.
User Testing & Results
Responsive Design for Scale
During my design ideation phase, I explored ways to adapt complex desktop search functionality to mobile for better responsiveness, ensuring consistent usability and information access across devices.
Enterprise Information Architecture
Given the wide variety of product types, I also worked on information architecture challenges in search and navigation — making sure content was discoverable, logically grouped, and usable by thousands of Takeda employees with varying goals.
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annaazhao@gmail.com ↗