How I enhanced the YouTube Music experience by building a feature that helps users find songs faster

YouTube Music

Role:

UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer

Tools:

Figma, FigJam

Duration:

75+ hours

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. 

Empathize

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. 

Problem

We want to learn how people find songs within playlists currently in YouTube Music so that we understand what will make this process more efficient.

Research Goal

Competitive Analysis

What’s already out there?

Compared and contrasted other music streaming platforms on their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

  • Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music

  • Listen ad-free with paid subscriptions 

  • All have features to curate playlists for the user

  • Amazon and Apple Music have high quality audio compared to Spotify

What are they doing well?

  • Amazon and Apple don’t have as developed social features as Spotify

  • Amazon and Apple don’t have ways to effectively filter through or search in playlists

  • Limited use without paid subscription

Where are they lacking?

User Interviews

What do real people need?

I conducted remote interviews on 5 participants who listen to music regularly on a music streaming platform.

*Note that I could not find enough YouTube Music users to participate, so participants include Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music users. All participated in a short usability test to understand how YouTube Music currently operates.

Affinity Mapping

What did I learn?

Interview Insights and Observations

  • Listening Behavior & Routines - music is a constant in users’ lives, users organize music based on mood, users listen to music with intention, users listen to and organize their music in unique ways, reasons for continued use of preferred music app

  • Discovery & Exploration - impact discovering music has on users, users stray from their preferred apps for music discovery, users want to rediscover music from their history

  • Pain Points Across Platforms - users desire organization tools within playlists, users struggle to find songs by searching, other issues with their music platforms / desired features

  • Social Experience - users are influenced by social features, users want the ability to share music across platforms

Usability Test Insights and Observations

  • Users found it difficult to find songs as filters were underdeveloped

  • Users had trouble navigating playlists without in-playlist search function

  • Users were confused by the general search feature

  • Users noted overall design opinions

Improving in-playlist navigation is essential to meet users’ emotional connection to music and resolve major usability gaps in playlist management.

Key Takeaway

Define

Persona

YouTube Music users need a way to search and filter within playlists because it is difficult for them to find previously saved songs.

POV + HMW

  • How might we make it easier for YouTube Music users to rediscover specific songs within their saved playlists?

Ideate

Develop a feature that allows the user to search and filter within playlists to find specific songs

Solution

What are the most important features to include to achieve this goal?

Feature Roadmap

Prioritize in-playlist search and filter features. Users will be able to find songs within playlists more easily and efficiently than they can now.

Prototype

What are the user’s goals?

Task Flows

Task #1: Find Song by Title

  • Users can search within playlist to find a specific song

Task #2: Find Song by Date Added

  • Users can filter alphabetically by title, alphabetically by artist, and by date added to find songs from a specific time period

Task #3: Play Songs from a Specific Month

  • When under the ‘date added’ filter, users can play / shuffle through songs from a specific month or set of months instead of manual playlist creation

Wireframes

Now let’s design

Low Fidelity

  • Hand drew key screens for each flow to take into mid-fidelity

  • Explored ways to add features in a seamless way to blend with YouTube Music’s brand

High Fidelity Wireframe

Let’s put it all together

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.

In-Playlist Search

Users often forget the artist and remember the title or vice versa, so searching within playlists narrows down options from the general search for songs in their playlists.

In-Playlist Filter

Users can easily find songs within lengthy playlists even if the only thing they remember about the song is around when they added it.

Users can play or shuffle songs from a particular month of saved songs, saving them the effort of creating their own playlists.

Monthly Playlist

Test

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 changes made to the YouTube Music app were clear and intuitive.

Usability Testing Results + Iterations

Where can the new Youtube Music features be improved?

I learned about several fixable pain points in my participants’ process of testing the prototype that regard small changes to improve the flow

1. See number of songs in the playlist

Revised to show number of songs overall in the playlist. People wanted to know how many songs are there to see if they could simply scroll to find the song.

Before

After

2. Make filter more obvious

Revised ‘sort by’ filter to make more obvious to click. It took users extra time to find this at first.

Before

After

3. Make months more visible while scrolling

Revised to make months sticky to the top for more visibility while scrolling.

Before

After

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

What did I learn from creating these YouTube Music features?

Key Takeaways

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.