Context:

A UX design side project

Team:

Solo, under mentorship

Role:

UX Designer

Timeline:

2 Week sprint

Deliverables:

Research findings, user persona, wireframes, interactive prototypes, high fidelity mockups of proposed changes to user interface design

APPLE MUSIC

UX Case Study

Apple Music is a music and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing, curated playlists. For this study, I focused on three main problems I discovered with Apple Music and sought evidence to support my theories through contextual inquiry, surveying and interviewing users.

Research

Challenges

• Use of metaphors in iconography

• Hierarchy of navigation

• Discoverability of common tasks

Solutions

To be an advocate for users means to provide clarity — which enables flow. Employing some simple design changes would provide more clear paths for these processes. With a few minor revisions to the user interface, the overall experience could be vastly improved. Through research and contextual inquiry, I was able to confirm my hypotheses about some of the usability issues with Apple Music on iOS.

Methodology

As of September, 2018, Apple Music had approximately 19% market share according to Midia. As such, it was not difficult to find users. I asked around in my different social circles to find people who use Apple Music for their main source of music streaming and recruited four people to survey and to conduct usability tests.Through video chat and in person interviews, I posed question to users in order to gain feedback on the hierarchical structure of the navigation and to gain insight into how they went about completing tasks. Using “Thinking Aloud” testing, I observed how the users engage with the app in their own environment and took notes.

Empathize

Users

Alex is a Passive User

He uses Apple Music passively, mainly listening to radio and curated content. He does not want to dedicate time or effort into building a personal library.

Manny is an Aficionado User

He uses Apple Music to curate his own personal music library, discover new artists and music by artists he follows, makes and listens to playlists.

Ashley & Scott are Hybrid Users

They use Apple Music for radio, much like the passive user and they periodically add to their library and/or make and listen to playlists.

“The (cloud)️ and (heart)️ are a little confusing I don’t know if I’m purchasing a song or borrowing it or saving it or what.”

- Manny

“I am not sure if the cloud means that songs will be downloaded to my icloud account and take up storage space.”

- Ashley

Ideate

Proposed design changes

To bean advocate for users means to provide clarity which enables flow. My goal is to make completing common tasks as seamless as possible for all user types. Employing some design changes will provide more clear paths for these processes.

Clarifying text

Small titles can be added, adjacent to the icons and/or tooltips can be displayed when a user taps or long presses on the icons.

Streamline icons

The heart shape that represents the “For You” section can be replaced with something else, making the heart a universal visual metaphorfor “like” only.

Additional visual status indicators

Additional icons or other visuals can be added to show the user the status of a song, artist, curated content set, or album. For example, the cloud icon can change into a checkmark next to the tracks that have already been downloaded to indicate to the user.

Methodology

Through research and contextual inquiry, I was able to validate my assumptions about some of the usability issues with Apple Music on iOS. For the aficionado user, I discovered that the learning curve is steepwhen they wish to deeply engage with the content. For the passive user, the tasks are very basic and the problems affect them less; however, they are able to see and acknowledge some issues that do exist. For the hybrid user, usability issues affect their ability to engage with the content but they do not wish to invest extra time into learning how to. If the experience was more intuitive, these hybrid users may convert to aficionados.

With a few minor revisions to the user interface, the overall experience could be vastly improved. The application has a lot of potential to overtake Spotify as the market leader for music streaming services.