How I enhanced the YouTube Music experience by building a feature that helps users find songs faster
Role:
UX/UI Designer
Project Type:
Added Feature
Tools:
Figma
FigJam
Duration:
2 weeks
Overview
Where YouTube Music stands against other platforms
YouTube Music is a music streaming platform with over 100 million songs to access and over 100 million Premium subscribers. The Premium version offers ad-free listening, offline listening, and several other features. I use the YouTube Premium Music app because it came in a bundle with other subscriptions, but I’ve come to see the benefits of my music app sharing my preferred video media platform. I’m an avid user of the app, however it falls behind other major music apps in certain basic capabilities.
There is no way to filter through songs or search for a song within a playlist, making it difficult for users to find the song they’re looking for without scrolling through the entire playlist.
The Problem
I developed a feature that allows the user to search and filter within playlists to find specific songs.
The Solution
The Final Design
Use in-playlist search feature to search for song title or artist
Use in-playlist filter to sort songs by date, artist, or title
Play songs from a particular month instead of manual playlist creation
Let’s rewind. What does the research show?
Competitive Analysis + User Interviews
Key findings
Users had trouble navigating playlists without in-playlist search functions or filters
Users enjoy listening to playlists, but desire easier ways to curate
Key Finding
Improving in-playlist navigation is essential to meet users’ emotional connection to music and resolve major usability gaps in playlist management.
How might we…
…make it easier for YouTube Music users to rediscover specific songs within their saved playlists?
Wireframes
My design process
In designing these screens, I focused on adding in these new features as seamlessly as possible. I wanted users to feel like they were using the real app.
Low Fidelity
Final High Fidelity Screens
5
Participants
5 users participated in usability testing using my Figma interactive prototype.
100%
Success Rate
Users easily completed all the tasks with minimal errors in a timely manner.
5/5
Ease of Use
User’s thought the prototype was intuitive and easy to navigate.
Future Iterations
What are next steps for YouTube Music?
Add features to desktop format - users often use their music streaming platforms on laptops and desktops as well as mobile
AI powered smart filters - within playlists and saved music, AI can filter users’ music by mood, genre, etc. for ease of playlist navigation
Key Takeaways
What did I learn from creating these YouTube Music features?
This project has helped me think more critically like I might as a UX designer working for an actual company. It is unlikely that I would be the only person working on a project from start to finish. With this project, I was able to take an existing platform and work under those constraints and design a feature that fits seamlessly within it.
It’s not always easy to find the right participants for a project. In this case, I wasn’t able to find enough YouTube Music listeners in the groups I reached out to, so I worked around this by conducting usability tests early on to give the participants who don’t use YouTube Music insight into how it operates.
It is important to schedule interviews early and ask more people than required, just in case.
