Literature review

After getting a better understanding of the challenge, the next step was to understand the audience we are designing for. To do so, we 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.

Defining the target audience

The social aspect becomes more tedious as users have to leave the app and use an external platform to communicate, which interferes with overall cohesiveness. The lack of connection here is something that users miss from having face-to-face interactions.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.

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!