
Spotify Remixed
Role: UX Research, UI/UX Designer
Project type: Conceptual case study
Together with two other UI/UX Designers, Simmi Chhabria and Nahla Almbaid, we evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of Spotify, and recommend improvements based on the findings.

Deep Diving into Spotify
According to Spotify Stats: Users, Revenue, & Demographics 2025 (Priori Data), majority of Spotify’s users are:
Aged between 18-34 (54.4%)
42.6% of users are premium members
We kept this demographic in mind when conducting our research.

Assessing the Spotify App
We wanted to identify what makes Spotify great and possible areas that the app can improve on, and divided the workload accordingly.
I worked on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis.
The sources of my research can be found here.
SWOT Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Customer Journey Mapping

Understanding Spotify’s Users
We wanted to know what Spotify Premium’s current users think about the product.
To do so, we brainstormed on what questions to ask that will enable us to identify their pain points.
We consolidated these questions into a discussion guide.
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Target areas include opinions on the product, competitors, playlist organization and execution of tasks.
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Tasks we asked users to perform include the process of liking songs and playlist management.

Problem Statement
Based on our research results, we have come up with our problem statement on the right, with organization being our key focus.
Spotify offers limited options for users to manage their playlists, and a non-intuitive "like" button for saving songs.
This makes organizing songs a tedious task, potentially affecting customer retention.

Creating a Persona
With the problem statement finalized, I crafted out the persona for the team. Doing so allowed us to stay on track with the target users we are designing for.

Improving Spotify
With our research completed, we ideated on how we can improve the Spotify app. We narrowed it down to 4 areas to focus on.
#1 - Home page personalization
#2 - Streamline ‘Liked’ Song Management
#3 - Song recognition feature
#4 - Playlist visual personalization

#1 - Home Page Personalization
According to the interview results, only 27% of users like Spotify’s current UI.
When asked why, they stated that they did not like how visually cluttered the Home page looked.
My team and I sought out to address this issue. Simmi headed the conceptualization of this feature.
Responsibilities:
Assist Simmi in the ideation process together with Nahla.

Ability to toggle recommendations
We wanted to give more power to user on what they would like to see on their home page. Adding a toggle switch allowed users to turn recommendations on and off, thereby reducing clutter.
When opening the app, users are notified about the revamped Home page
Users can now turn recommendations on and off by tapping the toggle switch.

Customizing sections
Users can also add, remove and rearrange sections of the Home page. This gives them the freedom in prioritizing what they would like to see on their Home page.
Users can access this feature by tapping the ‘Customize’ feature located on the top right corner of the Home page.
Once satisfied with the arrangement, users can tap ‘Done’ to finalize the appearance.
When tapped, users can rearrange the sections of the Home page.
Users can also add or remove sections of their Home page by selecting the ‘+’ icon on the top right corner.

#2 - Streamline ‘Liked’ Song Management
Of the users we interviewed:
67% preferred to add new songs they find to the in-built Liked Songs playlist.
The reason:
It saves time compared to adding the songs to their own personal playlists.
Resultant issue:
Accumulation of songs, leading to a cluttered Liked Songs playlist.
Responsibilities:
Create end-to-end user flows
Work on the high fidelity wireframes and prototypes

Solution: A Bulk Organization Feature
The purpose of this feature:
Facilitate the decluttering of the Liked Songs playlist through transferring select songs to other playlists.
The current method:
Users have to add one liked song at a time to a chosen playlist, making this task repetitive and time-consuming.
Why this feature?
With the bulk organization feature, users would be able to select multiple songs to add to a playlist in one go.
User Flow

Reintroducing the Heart icon
These users also expressed that they missed the heart icon to represent liking a song.
They mistake the current plus (+) icon meant as adding a song to a playlist, instead of its actual function: liking a song.
To address this issue, we added the heart icon back into Spotify’s UI.

High Fidelity Wireframe
On the Liked Songs playlist, users can manage their songs by tapping the ‘Manage Songs’ button located on the top left
A new overlay will appear and users would then choose which playlist they want to move the selected songs to.
Users can then choose the ‘move songs to a playlist’ option.
When tapped, a checkbox will appear, prompting users to pick the songs they want added to a playlist, tapping ‘Next’ when done.

#3 - The Spot-it Feature
What is Spot-it?
A song detection feature built into the Spotify app. With it, users can detect a song and immediately add it to their Spotify playlist.
Why add this feature?
Based on our research, Spotify’s competitors do not have a song detection tool built into their app. There is a demand for this in Spotify’s community forums, shown here.
Thus, having Spot-it integrated into Spotify will give the app an edge over its other competitors.
Responsibilities:
Came up with its concept
Designed the logo
Worked on the high fidelity wireframes and prototypes

Designing the Logo
When I was designing the Spot-it logo, I steered away from literal icons like a sound waves or microphone. I wanted it also has to capture the Spotify brand.
I went through the sketches with my team, progressively editing and narrowing down the options based on their feedback.
The Final Look
Many iterations have resulted in the following finalized logo design and its various states.

How it works
When opening the app, users are notified about the introduction of Spot-it.
Here, they are given the choice of adding it as a widget to their phone.
The feature is also accessible from the top right corner of the home page.
Once added as widget, it will appear on the phone screen.
Tapping on it starts the song detection process
Once a song is detected, it is automatically added to an in-built playlist, titled ‘Spot-it Songs’.
Here, the user can decide what they want to do with it, such as adding it to a playlist.

#4 - The Vibe Check Feature
Users that we interviewed also commented that all of their playlists look the same, and would prefer that each of their playlists have their own look and feel to match the mood of the songs they contain.
The Vibe Check Feature addresses this concern by providing users options to customize the appearance of their playlists.
It is also interactive, where the thumbnail visuals also change depending on the genre of songs added to it.
Responsibilities:
Design the Vibe Check icon
Worked on the high fidelity wireframes and prototypes
Implementation of song reordering gesture

Customizing playlist backgrounds
To change the color scheme of a playlist, tap the palette icon:
Choose from a preset color theme.
Once a theme is selected, the appearance of the playlist will change accordingly. We are also looking to explore custom themes/backgrounds for this feature.

Evolving thumbnails
Nahla came up with this amazing concept, where the thumbnail visual of a playlist will change according to the songs added to it based on their genres.
It is a feature that we hope will encourage users to organize their liked songs into playlists and watch them evolve.

Arranging song order using gestures
88% of the users we interviewed failed in performing gestures they thought were intuitive in performing tasks.
Of all the gestures attempted, the most common one was the attempt to holding and dragging a song in a playlist to arrange them.
We decided to implement such a gesture into our prototype.

High-fidelity Prototype
We decided to incorporate all 4 of the above focus areas into a seamless, high-fidelity prototype.
I worked on prototyping focus areas #2, #3 and #4.
I hope you will enjoy engaging with it as much as my team and I have while working on this project!