Collect user signals to create personalized music recommendations mapping to user’s tastes, ultimately driving retention and engagement.
In 2014 Xbox Music was rebranded Groove Music. We joined the Release Studio team under the direction of Claudio Guglieri to focus our attention on the Groove apps. One of my first challenges was to improve the first-run experience with a more engaging and personalized experience.
I joined the Groove universal app team as a product designer under the supervision of Claudio Guglieri. My focus was to revisit our onboarding experience to make it more personal and delightful. I worked closely with the research team to identify our problem statements and define opportunities. I created user flows, wireframes, prototypes, motions, redlines, and collaborated with the engineering teams for building the concept on Windows 10, Mobile (iOS & Android), and Xbox consoles.
Understand the experience, situation, and emotion of our target users.
Synthesise the findings to have a clear understanding of the problems and pain points.
Explore a wide variety of ideas to solve solutions to a problem.
A simple, cheap and fast way to shape ideas to test them.
Ask for feedback on your prototypes and iterate on the ideal solution.
Research helped us identified two main personas. The file activates user and the music streamer. We recruited six participants using the Groove Application to better understand their journey. All participants mentioned they have a valuable collection of music they maintained but also used different kinds of music streaming services. We then ask all participants to use the Groove application to perform two tasks. Open a music file from their local drive and discover new music from our service. For the first task, most participants communicated that they were anxious during the cold start experience when asked to choose a free trial before using the product. For the second task, all participants succeeded in discovering new music. Still, most participants said that it was a tedious task.
New users have to dig in our catalog of songs and playlist to find music they will like and start building a collection.
The cold start experience isn't optimized for new users has we only propose New and Popular content.
To get a clear overview of the end to end experience, and make sure that I don't miss a use case, I created a user flow that highlights the user path for a new user or a recurrent user.
The main goal of the taste profile is to gather signals from the user with a fun and delighting experience to provide personalized recommendations later on in the service. I've created several design prototypes in Framer and Origami to get a better sense of the user experience and use them in user studies to get feedback.
With the different prototypes created, I recruited 8 participants from our office but not familiar with the product. My goal was to iterate and get fast feedback quickly. The results were enlightening and helped us frame the direction of the taste profile. Below are some key insights from the participants.
Thanks to user feedback, I had a better understanding of the final concept I'd like to build. The timeline approach was the most interesting and scalable solution for users to build a taste profile while discovering new music. Here is a overview of the end to end experience for a new user starting Groove for the first time.
We ended up choosing the Timeline experience and refined the interaction to make it easy to understand and accessible on Mobile and Console.
This project was exciting and fun to design. Finding the right concept and creating high fidelity prototypes was really challenging. I'm used to low fidelity prototypes, but here we needed an end to end solution that could react to the mouse position, touch gestures, and output sound based on particular conditions. Playing with Framer and Origami was a lot of fun.
With the Music Taste Profile concept finalized, my next step is to move the consumption experience within Groove to optimize the music discovery experience. Make sure to check the Your Groove case study to learn more.
In 2014 Xbox Music was rebranded Groove Music. I joined the Release Studio team under the direction of Claudio Guglieri to focus our attention on the Groove apps. One of my challenge was to revisit the music discovery experience and improve the retention rate.
I joined the Groove universal app team as a product designer under the supervision of Claudio Guglieri. My focus was to revisit the music discovery experience and make it more personal and tailored to our user's taste. I worked closely with the research team to identify our problem statements and define opportunities. I created user flows, wireframes, prototypes, motions, redlines, and collaborated with the engineering teams for building the concept on Windows 10, Mobile (iOS & Android), and Xbox consoles.
Understand the experience, situation, and emotion of our target users.
Synthesise the findings to have a clear understanding of the problems and pain points.
Explore a wide variety of ideas to solve solutions to a problem.
A simple, cheap and fast way to shape ideas to test them.
Ask for feedback on your prototypes and iterate on the ideal solution.
Research helped us identified two main personas. The file activates user and the music streamer. We recruited six participants using the Groove Application to better understand their journey. All participants mentioned they have a valuable collection of music they maintained but also used different kinds of music streaming services. We then ask all participants to use the Groove application to perform two tasks. Open a music file from their local drive and discover new music from our service. For the first task, most participants communicated that they were anxious during the cold start experience when asked to choose a free trial before using the product. For the second task, all participants succeeded in discovering new music. Still, most participants said that it was a tedious task.
To get a clear overview of the end to end experience, and make sure that I don't miss a use case, I've laid down the different user paths from launching the Groove application to browsing recommended music.
To better understand how our competitors solve these problems, I audited Spotify and Apple Music. Both of them are mostly focusing on playlists to help their users to discover new and fresh content. Spotify releases 55 new playlists a week while Apple music releases 50 playlists a week.
The main concept was to leverage the Music Taste Profile to populate the Your Groove page with meaningful content tailored to the user music taste. I've proposed two main concepts to the leadership team. The first one was around a customized radio that leverages a natural language form contextual to the day of the week and the time of the day. While it was an interesting concept, we thought it wouldn't give enough options to the user.
We choose the second concept, which puts playlists at the center of the experience. The page is divided into two main sections, with three main playlists at the top. These playlists give our users a go-to destination every time they start the application. The rest of the page is filled with additional channels of different content types (Albums, Playlists, Radios) and sources (User collection, Groove catalog).
I then focused on improving the discovery of new content by allowing our users to preview the top three playlists without entering them. I defined some high-level principles and quickly moved into Framer and Origami to create several interaction prototypes.
With the Taste profile and the Your Groove page, we now have an end-to-end solution that helps new users to get a personalized music experience even on the first launch. It also encourages our recurrent users to come back several times a week to discover new content and get personalized and contextual recommendations. We confirmed this hypothesis as we notice a 7% increase in active users since the launch of this feature.
In 2014 Xbox Music was rebranded Groove Music. I joined the Release Studio team under the direction of Claudio Guglieri to focus our attention on the Groove apps. One of my challenge was to revisit the discovery experience and improve the retention rate.
I joined the Groove universal app team as a product designer under the supervision of Claudio Guglieri. My focus was to revisit the music discovery experience and make it more personal and tailored to our user's taste. I worked closely with the research team to identify our problem statements and define opportunities. I created user flows, wireframes, prototypes, motions, redlines, and collaborated with the engineering teams for building the concept on Windows 10, Mobile (iOS & Android), and Xbox consoles.
Understand the experience, situation, and emotion of our target users.
Synthesise the findings to have a clear understanding of the problems and pain points.
Explore a wide variety of ideas to solve solutions to a problem.
A simple, cheap and fast way to shape ideas to test them.
Ask for feedback on your prototypes and iterate on the ideal solution.
Research helped us identified two main personas. The file activates user and the music streamer. We recruited six participants using the Groove Application to better understand their journey. All participants mentioned they have a valuable collection of music they maintained but also used different kinds of music streaming services. We then ask all participants to use the Groove application to perform two tasks. Open a music file from their local drive and discover new music from our service. For the first task, most participants communicated that they were anxious during the cold start experience when asked to choose a free trial before using the product. For the second task, all participants succeeded in discovering new music. Still, most participants said that it was a tedious task.
Recurrent file activates users don't see the value of Groove. For them, Groove is just the a player that plays music from their local drive.
New users have to dig in our catalog of songs and playlist to find music they will like and start building a collection.
Recurrent Groove users expect to see fresh music tailored to their taste every time they visit the application.
To get a clear overview of the end to end experience, and make sure that I don't miss a use case, I've laid down the different user paths from launching Groove to browsing recommended playlists.
We looked at the telemetry and notice that 70% of users who start the app don't stream music. With additional research, we discovered that most of these users are those who usually open media files directly from folders instead of using corresponding apps. A lot of these users are not adopting Groove to manage their music and keep launching it through a file activate (aka. Recurrent file activate users). How can we slowly transition these users in using Groove to organize their local collection and ultimately upsell them to the premium experience?
With the flow for the file activates user optimized, I then focused on the second persona the music streamer. To reduce churn, I decide to focus on the cold-start experience to improve the music personalization. The main goal is to gather signals from the user with a fun and delighting experience to provide personalized recommendations later on in the service.
I've created several prototypes on Mobile and PC and tested them with 8 participants found in the office but not working the product. The results were enlightening and helped us frame the direction of the taste profile. Below are some key insights from the participants.
We ended up choosing the Timeline experience and refined the interaction to make it easy to understand and accessible on Mobile and Console.
Browsers have been around since the early days of the internet. Innovation over the years has emphasized speed, compatibility and safety. But what people do on the web is so much more than just browse.
Our goal was to expand the type of content you can read within your browser and make it accessible to all users. We wanted users to have the best reading experience, allowing them to interact with the book in the same way they might do with a physical book but with more opportunities to enhance their understanding and engagement, with learning tools, notes, highlights, doodles or Cortana. I led a team of 5 designers to design the Windows Books Apps on five platforms (Windows 10, Xbox, Windows Phone 10, iOS and Android mobile and tablet). I've defined the scope and product vision, doing wireframes, user flows, visuals, prototypes, user tests, motions, redlines and supervised the quality of the development until releasing to production. We worked closely with three scrum teams in Paris and two design teams based in Redmond (GMT-7) and Hyderabad (GMT+5:30) working on other parts of EDGE.
I was the design lead for Books in Edge defining the user experience and visual direction on Windows 10, WP10, iOS and Android mobile and tablet. I was leading a small team of two junior designers and worked closely with three scrum teams in Paris and two design teams based in Redmond (GMT-7) and Hyderabad (GMT+5:30) working on other parts of EDGE. I've defined the scope and product vision, doing wireframes, user flows, visuals, prototypes, user tests, motions, redlines and supervised the quality of the development until releasing to production.
We did a comprehensive competitive analysis and ran several user studies with a diverse panel of readers. The goal was for us to have a good understanding of the market and ensure our product brings unique values to our users. Once the project planning was ready, I've built and costed a prioritized design backlog to keep track of our progress and ensure we deliver designs on time. With two junior designers in the team, I decided to create a design process to follow to ensure they have a good understanding of the problem before jumping too quickly on solutions while still giving them some room for autonomy. It consisted of a OneNote page that the designer would fill with, a problem definition, success metrics, list of job stories, competitive analysis, user flows and lastly links to prototypes and visuals.
Understand the experience, situation, and emotion of our target users.
Synthesise the findings to have a clear understanding of the problems and pain points.
Explore a wide variety of ideas to solve solutions to a problem.
A simple, cheap and fast way to shape ideas to test them.
Ask for feedback on your prototypes and iterate on the ideal solution.
Research showed that users under age 30 are more likely to read their e-books on a phone or computer than on an e-reader or tablet. Additionally, the tablet is the preferred device for long-form reading, but the phone is often used when the tablet is left at home.
Users favored the computer for scenarios where they needed to learn, take notes, highlight content. Users plebiscite e-books over printed books when they are searching for a new book to read quickly. Lastly, e-books are easier to take with you when traveling or commuting and can enhance the reading experience with accessible content and rich media.
I enjoy being able to read any of my books wherever I am. I always have my phone on me, therefore my books come with me.
Typically I start on the iPad and then if I am really into it, I will switch to my phone since I don't have my tablet on me all the time.
Research allowed me to develop better insight of the different user types. Based on my findings, I was able to create two fictional personas. Personas helped the product and design team to recognize that different people have diverse needs and expectations. It helps us during our ideation phase to create a good user experience for our target users and prioritize our backlog properly.
A lot of users mentioned that they tried to read digital books but that their experience was limited to one platform
Many users are hesitant to read digital books as they don't see what are the benefits compared to reading a physical book.
Some users expect to use a digital book similarly to a physical book (bookmarking, taking notes, highlighting paragraphs...)
Reading a digital book should be fluid and enjoyable. The content beautifully reflows and adapts to my device sizes and reading preferences. Unlike a physical book, the reader provides interactive tools to get the most of your reading experience.
The user can customize his reading preferences and change font size, screen’s luminosity, select font that best suits his reading habits (news, typewriter, serif, non serif…) and most important of all, change the reading theme.
With new designers joining the team, the growing number or features, and platform to support. It became clear to me that I needed to invest time in building a robust design system to ease the work of the team and ensure a consistent product.
