YouTube Music App Redesign for Offline Users
This project was a part of the Udacity UX Design Nanodegree Program.
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Problem with YouTube Music App
Google Play Music is the recently discontinued service of Google, and the company is forcing its existing users to migrate to YouTube Music. The migration has become problematic as most of the features and functions for the free membership and offline mode isn’t working well.
The design of the App is focused on the users in the APAC market who prefer free music services over premium membership.
Research & Analysis
The team wanted to understand the pain points of YouTube Music users to identify the design issues to design a user-friendly version. Also, we wanted to know the other alternative services are available for users to listen to music to see which ones perform well and seek design inspiration.
The research was split into two parts - Primary Research using Surveys, and Secondary Research using News, User Reviews of YouTube Music app, and discussions on Social Media Platforms. The analysis was done using Affinity Mapping.
Findings
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46.6% of the music listeners use music app’s free membership.
As a wide collection of songs, downloading songs, playlist creation, and an option to listen to uploaded songs from their device are available for free, users prefer free services over paid membership.
“Google Play Music is the best without any diversion to music. We can freely listen to our favourite songs and the app is easy to use and has all the functions. However, several features for uploaded content aren’t currently working in the free YouTube Music experience (YouTube Reviews, 2020).”
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37.9% of users prefer to use offline mode in their music app.
Listening to songs using the Internet takes a lot of bandwidth and drains the device battery fasters. Due to this most of the users prefer offline mode over online.
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Spotify (31%) and Wynk (20.7%) are other popular music apps.
Users love Spotify and Wynk over YouTube Music due to its clean UI, wide collection of songs, easy creation of playlists, and sharing of playlists/songs using free services.
“When Spotify came about, I embraced it as the change the music industry needed. Then Google Music popped up. It was cheaper, and it was Google, so I subbed. I was pleasantly surprised. It worked great. Discovering music felt actually intelligent - building on my preferences. It was smooth, loading playlists with hundreds of songs instantly.
Then google forced me onto YouTube Music. Every time I open the app there's a gigantic ad for Taylor Swift or some other pop song. The app is slow and clunky. Loading playlists which was instant on google music results in minutes of scrolling down a lazy loading list. The shuffle button somehow doesn't work. It's generally a waste app (Reddit, 2020).”
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Problems with YouTube Music (Survey by 9To5Google).
Solution
From the analysis, we concluded,
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The enhanced version of YouTube Music will focus on users using the offline mode with free membership services and playing the songs on their device.
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This version will almost provide a clear UI to help users navigate through YouTube Music with ease.
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The search option is shifted to the bottom.
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Search, Explore, and Library tabs will not function in offline mode
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Offline music listening has a separate tab and won’t be mixed with the online features.
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The UI of offline music listening, My Music tab will be similar to Google Play Music.
Low-Fidelity Sketching.
Using the Crazy 8s method, the Lo-Fi sketch was done. The prototypes were designed using Figma.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
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Mid-Fidelity Prototype
High-Fidelity Prototype
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Usability Testing
The Prototype was tested with 12 potential users. This testing helped us to understand which functions/features of the app didn’t work. Users were satisfied with the offline mode, however, added that they need some additional functions of scrolling and smooth transition between each page.
The final prototype can be viewed here.