Redefining the scroll
Spotify · 2022
My role
Designed the end-to-end experience and created the system for making the interaction possible while collaborating with multiple teams to maintain consistency.
The Team
I worked as the main designer on the project. 5 engineers, 1 product manager, 1 content designer and collaborated with numerous teams.
Overview
As products evolve, it is important to find opportunities that impact the lives of users positively. Spotify as a company operates on a 2-way street. On one side of the street are the listeners and on the other side, are creators that provide content for our listeners.
Working on the scroll of the Now Playing View was one of those rare cases where we were able to connect listeners to further to the content they are already consuming in the moment. Historically, the scroll of the Now Playing View had made it possible for users to access supporting content like lyrics and storylines. Why not find interesting ways to extend that??
Finding connections
When listening to music, a couple of questions cross our mind when we stumble on a song that we have never heard before "Who is this artist?", "What are they singing about?" "What is their story?". This feeling bleeds over to the other audio types on Spotify. There was a continuous need for listeners to find out more about the track [song or podcast episode] they were listening to in the moment.
Realm of connection
In finding connections to tracks, we discovered that there were some information that could be tied any track. It was important that we found the right one to use within the right context. Beyond the connection of information to the playing track, it was also important to take the relationship of the listener with the playing track and artist.
Image of the track relationship of scroll cards to the playing track.
From establishing this realm of connection, and talking to our listeners, we were able to better understand the type of information they needed when listening to an artist.
Artist Bio
Song Credits
Lyrics
Storyline
Merch
Live Events
Music Video
Artist Clips
Creating a system
While trying to merchandise the information within the scroll, we were faced with a number of option. We weighted the option of making the scroll a flat page of seperate information. However, while reflecting on the existing system, we decided to stick with the cards we already had to lyrics and consolidate them.
The Scroll Cards
Having settled on cards, I did a review of the existing cards we already had within the scroll view of the Now Playing View. What I landed on was a system that gave a bit of structure but provided the right kind of flexibility to add and remove cards to serve more value propositions.
Samples of the Artist Bio cards
Anatomy of a Scroll card
Anatomy of the Podcast Q&A card
Expanding beyond music
After successfully testing the scroll cards for music, we worked with other teams to expand the value proposition beyond just music. There was a strong use case for finding extra context behind the podcast episode users were listening to. Alongside this, there were also opportunities to engage fans of podcasts to feel like a part of the podcasts they love.
Following the pattern set with lyrics, teams working on Transcripts (captions) and Chapters also added scroll cards to give users the best companions to their listening experience.
Supporting the Episode
As a part of the effort to make the scroll a richer experience for Podcast Listeners as well, we worked on finding the information with the right connection to the playing episode to best serve our existing users.
Show Description
Transcripts
Chapters
QnA
Polls
Samples of the Artist Bio cards
Smart ordering
As a follow-up, the team worked on automatically ordering items within the scroll based on the listener's relationship with the playing track. This means we made the content behind the scroll feel more personal to each individual's experience and journey on Spotify.
Evolving for Desktop
The changes to the Now Playing View scroll was also adopted by the Web and Desktop teams to give listeners a richer experience across the entire Spotify experience.
Results
While I can not publicly talk about the exact results of this project, I can say we had positive impact on the overall Spotify experience. We moved important metrics significantly.