TuneIn

Overview

In collaboration with Sonos and Adobe XD, in a one week long design competition, participants were tasked to design an app where people can easily discover and share their love of music with others in the same space, in-person, whether or not they have a music service subscription or digital library. (Apologies for the run on sentence there.)

TuneIn aims to solve the problem of physical proximity that restricts friends from shared music experiences and create an experience that replicated users being in the same physical space.

Project details

My role
Led visual design, prototyping, and presenting to judges

Team
Briana L and Myself

Tools
AdobeXD

Duration
One week

Awarded top 10 finalist!

Creative brief provided by Adobe:

Identify a target market and area of need, and design an accessible third-party mobile app where people can easily discover and share their love of music with others in the same space, in-person, whether or not they have a music service subscription or digital library.

Initial thoughts

To understand the challenge, we reflected on shared music experiences, what people enjoy about it, and what’s important to keep intact?Thinking about events such as concerts or even just listening to music in the car, sharing music with people close to you is an emotional experience that can strengthen relationships and enhances the overall mood.

Understanding the challenge

Literature review

To better understand the challenge and the audience I'm designing for, I conducted literature reviews and found that many felt a sense of disconnection as they tried to share music remotely with those close to them. There are apps such as Spotify that allow you to follow a friends’ playlist.

However, even though people can “connect” to their close friends while listening to music, like viewing their most recent playlists or seeing what they are currently listening to, they aren’t able to interact with them or share the experience in real-time. Users aren’t able to see when their friends are on the app and they also can’t communicate through texting or talking while listening to music. Moreover, it requires everyone to have a subscription to the same platform, such as Spotify.

Honing in on the social aspect, it can become tedious for users to leave the app and use an external platform in order to communicate. The separation doesn't feel cohesive and the lack of connection here is something that users miss from having face-to-face interactions.

Defining the audience

We also found that Spotify’s core user base range from 18-29, making that audience quite broad. Drawing from an area of need, many friend groups are often separated because of college and contexts like a global pandemic, so we wanted to think of a way to remedy these situations for 18-22 year olds.

Created a how might we statement to better highlight the key points of this project, which is...

“How might we create a virtual platform that connects friends and replicates an in-person shared music experience”

Time to ideate

Sketching the ideas

Having conducted literature review and understanding our user’s needs each of us went forward with sketching. I had trouble visualizing what this app would look like so I sketched out potential solutions and features that are important for the app. Features such as listening worldwide or a live listening party. Listening worldwide would allow the user to tune in with other people, and it's not restricted to just their friends. Allows them to discover new music.

User flow

After developing sketches, it was still a bit unclear what the app would offer to users, so we created a flow to ensure we have the steps necessary for our users to effectively navigate through each page.

Wireframes

The user flow helped to narrow down certain features of the app such as allowing personalization on a user's music preferences, free range to listen to other people’s listening parties, and the most important feature is to create a listening party that allows the user and their friends to tune in together.

Final Solution

Onboarding

Users are presented with a sign up page where they are able to sync their contacts to connect with friends within the app, eliminating the need to rely on external modes of communication.

Users can also select their music preferences in order to receive personalized recommendations for music and artists. This helps the app customize a more unique experience for each individual and harbors the “for you” feeling.

Personal Listening Party

Through the home page, users are able to join listening parties all over the world to connect with new people or they are able to start their own listening party and jam to songs with their friends.

Personal listening party

In the jam session, users can talk with one another and discuss the song or ask if any of their friends know of a similar song. It replicates what the experience is like when together.

Moreover, users can also add a song to the queue, much like how they are able to queue a song when jamming together during a card ride.

Check track list + end party

As mentioned, users and friends can add a song to the queue and check what song is coming up.

Once everyone is content they can end their party and check out the track list that everyone created together

Receipt

Users have a new playlist to walk away with and one that is meaningful since everyone chipped in.

Jokes on you, there's more

Feedback

Since my teammate and I placed as a top 10 finalist, we were able to present our project and get feedback from the judges. Here’s what the judges had to say…

”To further replicate being side by side, why not facetime alongside listening together? Why is it audio only?

”Why are users typing and not talking if this is to replicate an in-person experience?”

Next steps

Noting the feedback we received, it seems as though the listening party portion was unclear. Some judges interpreted it as typing while listening instead of speaking while listening. My teammate and I would like to revisit those areas that were confusing and see how can we make it clear for the users what they can and cannot do in the app.

My takeaways

This was honestly one of the more challenging but rewarding designathons that I’ve done. The creative brief was quite tricky and my teammate and I had trouble approaching it and felt very lost in the beginning. We got stuck on how to replicate an in-person experience virtually and how users can get those happy memories out of using an app.

This designathon was also happening during finals week so I was swamped with 3 other final projects that week and wasn’t sure if the project would come together. However, when working on the finishing touches such as the design system and the prototype it reminded me of how much I love designing and why I wanted to challenge myself in the first place.

Given that we had such limited time for the designathon, I would like to revise areas that caused confusion and refine certain areas. I would also love to user test and see what other areas are confusing and need improvement on!

A version with an updated UI is coming soon! It showcases feedback from the judges and a design system that better represents TuneIn! Here's a sneak peek