Eve is a fresh take on what an easy to navigate music application could look like. It's user interface was designed with the intent of providing a relaxed user experience focused on easy discovery of live events and video/album art.
The explore navigation page is designed to ease music exploration and consists of :
Featured songs
This provides a visually appealing entry point and allows for immediate engagement with trending or important music.
Curated playlists
These offer pre-selected, themed collections that simplify decision-making for users.
Curated song list
This offers a more granular exploration option, allowing users to discover individual tracks that might interest them
Trending artist list
This feature helps users discover new artists related to their interests
Trending music
This keeps the content fresh and relevant, giving users a sense of what's current in the music world without requiring them to search extensively.
The explore navigation has a segmented control that allows the user to explore by playlists, artists, albums, genres, and instruments.
The library navigation page features a well-organized layout that simplifies the search for saved music :
Recently played
This feature reduces cognitive load by providing quick access to content the user had engaged with recently.
Saved playlists
Saved playlists, users can quickly access their curated collections.
Liked artists
This category allows users to browse their music by liked artists, which is a natural way many users think about music.
Liked albums
Albums often represent a specific theme in an artist's work and the liked albums feature allows users to access music in the way the artist intended.
Liked genres + instruments
Categorizing music by genre aligns with how many people naturally think about and explore music.
The home page features an intuitive interface for browsing upcoming live music concerts, allowing users to easily discovery and engagement :
Live Event Feed
Featured live event feed with clickable concert cards and a quick booking button.
Event Details
Each event card leads to a dedicated section containing show dates and venues, information about the artist, and a call to action button to book tickets.
I thoroughly studied the UI of Spotify and the most common user complaints tech reviews pointed toward.
"..Spotify’s app is getting cluttered and overleveraged"
"The menu was full of recommendations and recent plays — I couldn’t find “Albums” anywhere in the list. There wasn’t even a clear way to navigate to it."
Source : The Verge, Sep 30, 2022.
"Spotify’s new design is part TikTok, part Instagram, and part YouTube"
"Spotify has for years tried to find ways to put podcasts and music and everything else side by side but seems to be recognizing that the best answer is to give each thing more space to breathe."
Source : The Verge, Mar 8, 2023.
"The auto-playing, social-network wannabe Home feed is a mess."
"The TikTok and Instagram-inspired feed of auto-playing music and recommendations looked immediately tiresome.."
Source : Trusted Reviews, March 28, 2023
Apart from this, the Spotify community page is filled with users complaining about the annoying live events feed urging Spotify to add a turn off feature.
Keeping aside the business goals of the platform, there was so much to learn and unfold about structuring of content.
Modern music streaming platforms have evolved beyond their core functionality resulting in cluttered, overwhelming interfaces that detract from the primary purpose of music discovery and enjoyment.
Retaining the underlying structure of music meta data.
Reducing and organizing content per page, making sure audiobooks, music, and podcasts are separated.
Aim for a low learning curve - a completely new interface may frustrate existing users, potentially leading to app abandonment.
Better organize music content while retaining live events, podcasts and audiobooks in the same application.
A sleek interface with no auto-playing videos and a soothing color scheme.
An interface that promotes live events and music and album art discovery.
Conducted an analysis of Spotify's content structure and user flows to establish an understanding of content organization and user navigation.
Established main navigation items - Explore, Home and My Library.
Simplified content discovery by separating podcasts, music and audiobooks under each navigation item
Created Information Architecture to organize features and establish heirarchy
Took inspiration from the colors of twilight to creating a soothing theme.
Explored ways to design a clean music player that would feature full length music videos and album art with the option to view live lyrics and go full screen to encourage discovery and appreciation.
Featured live events discovery and streamlined booking process in a clutter-free user journey
1. Conducting usability testing with high-fidelity prototypes prior to finalizing the user interface would have been ideal.
2. Conducting qualitative research with avid music app users to uncover deeper insights about frustrations with current applications would have helped me add more innovative features.
1. Given more time, I would have liked to create a simpler user interface and reworked the key components for a minimalistic look.
2. I wanted to explore unconventional interface designs that retained the structure of music metadata while streamlining user flows.