DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING DOES NOT REPRESENT A PRODUCT OF Spotify® AND ASSOCIATES, NOR AM I CURRENTLY IN ANY WAY ASSOCIATED WITH Spotify® OR ANY OTHER COMPANY.
This case study only represents a fictionary new feature that Spotify could think to introduce on wearable devices.
Case Study
Introduction
This website has been created right before my application for the position "Summer Internship Product Management | Experience Mission (EMEA)" at Spotify. No one knows this domain exists.
If you're reading this, you are likely an employee at Spotify screening my application. To give you a brief introduction, I decided to work on this case study because I believe that there's no better way of demonstrating enthusiasm and knowledge than "putting my hands in the dough".
The internship description mentioned that the team hosting the intern is focused on making Spotify come alive on wearable devices.
The following is an idea I had on how to achieve this goal.
Music has always been a powerful mean to drive human motivation and inspiration. From the earliest moments of human history, people have utilized music to fuel their efforts and push beyond their limits.
With the advent of mobile technology, we can now bring music with us while we engage in physically demanding activities like sports.
Currently, the people who use Spotify during sport activities, can either select their music before or during the workout.
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In the first case (before the workout), the user will likely create/choose a playlist or an album. A pain point of this approach is that it is very static: the user’s physical and mental states change several times during the workout, and a pre-selected song list can’t match this variability.
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In the second case (during the workout), the user will adopt a choose-as-you-go method and will take breaks during the workout to choose a song that matches his mood. The downside of this method is that finding the perfect song could be time-consuming and might impact the schedule of the workout.
Music as a Human Driver
and current pain points of doing sports with music
Heartbeat
Your body chooses songs for you
Thanks to the advances in wearable technology, it is now possible to track a range of physiological markers like heart rate and oxygen levels, providing a window into our current physical state. Spotify could leverage on this information to take the music experience during sports to the next level.
Heartbeat could be a new feature using AI to match songs with the listeners’ physical state in real-time, creating a personalised soundtrack that adapts to their changing physical state and emotional journey. This feature would delegate the choose-as-you-go approach to an algorithm, removing the need for the user to pause the workout and choose the next song.
In this way Spotify would be able to give their wearable-owning users a seamless music experience, allowing them to fully focus and be more energic in their workouts.
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING DOES NOT REPRESENT A PRODUCT OF Spotify® AND ASSOCIATES, NOR AM I CURRENTLY IN ANY WAY ASSOCIATED WITH Spotify® OR ANY OTHER COMPANY.
This prototype only represents a fictionary new feature that Spotify could think to introduce on wearable devices.
Interactive
Prototype
The following is a UX/UI prototype of Heartbeat on Apple Watch.
Feel free to interact with it
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The user opens the app on their smartwatch and taps on Heartbeat
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The user can scroll between different workouts to set the mood of the music they want to listen and the length of their session. Length will determine also the countdown on the workout screen.
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The smartwatch starts gathering physiological parameters from the user's body (i.e., heart rate, oxygen level, etc.), feeds them to an algorithm to determine the best song to start the workout, and starts playing.
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For all the length of the session, Heartbeat will choose songs to push the user's physiological parameters to their max values (these values are different on each person and could be computed knowing the user's height, weight and age).
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The user can access the summary of his workout by clicking on the BPM indicator inside the workout screen
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A more detailed chart could be displayed on other mobile devices logged in the same account (ex. on a smartphone the workout summary chart could display which song the user was listening during peaks in physiological parameters).
How does it work?
The user's journey in Heartbeat