Apple Music Redesign
Task
Redesigned Apple Music to improve user-engagement
Tools
Adobe XD
Team
1 Product Designer (me)
The Challenge
I took up the challenge of redesigning the Apple music application as I felt that there were a lot of issues with the previous design and discouraged some users from using the application. Thus, I made design improvements to increase user engagement in the app.
Process
I performed user research on the internet to see other people's issues with the app and conducted user interviews to help me better understand what was wrong with this application. Later, once I had all my data, I designed low-fidelity wireframes to help me get all my ideas together, followed by a mock-up of the app.
Ideation
Problems
Poor playlist recommendations
Lacks ready-made playlists for certain types of music (i.e. Alternative Hip-hop)
Poor social interaction with other Apple Music users
The browse and search buttons are the same
Solution
Apple Music currently does not have a proper homepage for users to browse through without being interrupted by playlists and music they do not want to listen to. For this reason, I implemented albums users have recently heard at the top of the screen, so if they go back to access it, it will be there.
Next, I included artists that have just released new music so that users who are not aware of it or want to expand their music taste can take a look at their homepage to do so.
The app has a lot of generalized playlists for everyone to listen to, but they forget about their target audience that likes playlists for specific types of music. For this reason, I have decided to include a wide variety of playlists for people who belong to that group can listen to.
From the original design of the app, we see that there are two separate buttons for browse and search when they essentially have the same content in them; for the redesign, I decided to remove the browse option and just keep the search button as users would benefit from that feature more and it makes the bottom of the page look more cleaner.
Apple Music has made curation its design and not a feature. The entire app is far too heavily focused on curation— ‘Listen Now,’ ‘Browse,’ ‘Radio,’ etc. Apple Music is missing one feature, “Smart Playlists,” for users who like curating their music according to their taste instead of Apple music doing it for them. I have included a “filter” option for the redesign to filter their music taste to what they like. By doing this, Apple music creates a curated playlist based on your mood, music genre and instrumental use you want to see in that song.
It was hard to find friends and interact with them with the original design. In my redesign, I decided to implement to sync your friends from your contacts so that it will be easier to find them as well as for the friends you do have you can see what types of music they are listening to at the moment which will help increase the social interaction with other apple music users.
Finally, I included one last feature in my redesign was Apple Music Wrapped. Although the end of the year Apple music replays are fun, It feels like Apple music users feel left out at the end of the year when all the Spotify users share their Spotify wrapped. Moreover, I decided to include this feature in the redesign of my app to help with the general use.
Takeaways
This challenge motivated me to think outside the box about incorporating all the ideas into the phone screens and thinking about the placements of certain buttons and text. As a result, it also helped me get creative with my thinking and try to test what works and what doesn’t. I would interview more people in the future, as I only interviewed music lovers to redesign the app. I would interview people who are not die-hard music fans but listen to it occasionally. This would help me gain different perspectives and make my design more inclusive.