The Problem & Challenge

Did you feel stressed and nervous when you are asked to be a DJ at parties?

We interviewed 12 people ageing from 21 to 28 who recently had thrown parties and often performed as DJs at parties, we found that ten of the interviewees feel nervous when they performed as DJs at a party because they felt that " their music tastes would be judged", "people might not like their music", or "the party would become boring due to the bad choices of music". Therefore, this group of interviewees feel terrified to be a DJ at parties. Only two of the interviewees who have musical backgrounds were very confident with their music tastes and would like to share all genres of their playlists at parties with passion.

The problem

<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/3551522d-4f27-47a6-af0d-cd1cf31ee311/icons8-pain-points-50.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/3551522d-4f27-47a6-af0d-cd1cf31ee311/icons8-pain-points-50.png" width="40px" /> People feel terrified to be DJs at parties and gatherings because their music tastes will be judged.

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When DJs host a party they expect all guests will enjoy it and have no complaints about their music tastes. But people always have different music tastes. Party DJs found it very difficult to create a party playlist that can engage all party guests. They felt sad when people complain about their music tastes. Therefore, people fear being a DJ at a party, some of them randomly use recommended songs on Spotify rather than creating by themselves to avoid others’ judgements for their music tastes.

The challenge

<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/683cf233-8fb6-4614-8412-e69c13f643f0/icons8-effort-50_(1).png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/683cf233-8fb6-4614-8412-e69c13f643f0/icons8-effort-50_(1).png" width="40px" /> The challenge is designing a way to relieve DJ-ing pressure off from one person at parties and to make every party participants feel engaged, satisfied and connected.

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The solution

Design a new feature in Spotify

that enables a party DJ to create a collective party session, where all party participants can add their music into a playlist and collectively reorder the playlist by liking and disliking songs. ******

Video. The final prototype of MusicMash

The Design Process

From the pain points to a product design

Untitled

User Research

As I mentioned in the beginning, we have interviewed 12 people, who are master students at KTH based in Sweden. The interviewees regularly throw parties or join parties. At parties, most of them like using Spotify to play music when they DJ at a party, few of them use Apple Music.

Figure - Problem Probing

Through exploring their music behaviours and problems at parties, we got some important insights:

<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/ad8094e6-087c-46dc-841a-d30e9c62926b/icons8-idea-50.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/ad8094e6-087c-46dc-841a-d30e9c62926b/icons8-idea-50.png" width="40px" /> DJ-ing in social contexts makes people feel terrified because they are afraid that their music tastes would be judged and their music will ruin the party vibe.

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<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/fcf06ab2-31ca-4605-8fae-5da40a819272/icons8-idea-50.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/fcf06ab2-31ca-4605-8fae-5da40a819272/icons8-idea-50.png" width="40px" /> Spotify's new feature "Session" has limited space and functionalities for parties so that people usually just use a shared playlist.

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<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/5c1421c4-3c7d-409c-a9c9-396d2b375840/icons8-idea-50.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/5c1421c4-3c7d-409c-a9c9-396d2b375840/icons8-idea-50.png" width="40px" /> People are not satisfied with the recommended songs for a playlist and they would like to listen to others' recommended songs.

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Figure - An interview with an active party person

A Party DJ needs a music playlist that engages all party participants thereby making the party enjoyable to everyone because music has a significant impact on the party vibe.

The POV Statement

User Persona

Figure - User Personas

We targeted three personas after going through a set of in-depth analyses of interviewees' music behaviours and music personalities. The detailed process of user analysis is Here.

Among the three personas, Alice would be the most important one who can represent the majority of potential users. However, the musicians, like Chris, would be more likely to use our app due to their musical personalities and musical backgrounds. And Bob also will benefit from using MusicMash, MusicMash offers Bob not only entertaining experiences, but opportunities to socialize, connect, and build a more open personality.

.valueFor Alice {
 
		musical-personality: more confident;
		DJ-ing-experience: more relaxed;
		party-experience: more entertained; 

}
.valueFor Chris {
 
		DJ-ing-experience: more satisfied & no complaints;
		party-experience: more entertained; 

}
.valueFor Bob {
 
		musical-personality: more confident;
		DJ-ing-experience: more motivated;
		party-experience: more enjoyable; 
		social-personality: more confident, connected, and social;

}

Ideation

" How might we help party DJs to engage all party participants by playing music that everyone feels satisfied with?"

" How might we relieve the DJ-ing pressure off of one person in a social context?"
" **How might we motivate introverts to contribute their music at a party (and therefore help them connect with people)?"**
The HMW questions

To narrow down the HMW questions, we extracted four themes from all HMW, i.e. Feedback, Motivation, Order and Contribution. And we narrowed it down to one HMW question:

Figure - HMW Thematic Analysis

How Might We relieve DJ-ing pressure off of one person in a social context and encourage collective contributions?

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To answer the HMW question, we firstly used Worst Possible Idea method to ideate the worst ideas that make the problem worse. We came up with many interesting worst ideas, such as:

Each guest asks their neighbours for music recommendations.

If nobody contributes songs at a party, there will be a 5-min penalty.

Everyone listens to their music in their headphones.

Then, we turned these worst ideas into good ideas:

Guess what do your neighbours like and queue your guesses, you will earn points if it is correct.

Silent disco.

If someone doesn’t choose a song, he/she will get a dare.

Figure - Worst Possible Ideas