App Critique 5: Spotify Redesign

Spotify just got a major redesign and it looks fantastic.

The new design, which rolls out Wednesday for the desktop player, web player and iPhone app, features a new dark color scheme, new fonts and icons and creates a more consistent look and feel across platforms.

• Is the design appropriate for the target audience? Who is the target audience?
  • Their user base demographic is 18-27, however their larger demographic is 14-55.  The update adds handsome Proxima Nova type, rounded iconography and buttons to reflect the company’s new logo, large photos on artist pages, and a dark color scheme that accentuates important areas (like play buttons) with Spotify’s trademark green.  The larger, filtered, artwork will appeal to everyone as the imagery really shares the personality of the music you’re listening to.
  • From a design perspective I think it definitely matches the demographic; darker and cleaner, lots of friendly gesture demand, a sweet parallax movement when you click on a playlist, and a more iOS7-ish feel.
• Does the content, organization, and navigation make sense for a mobile or touch context?
  • Content:
    • Yes, there is more direct iconography, larger photos for your playlists as opposed to just the title tracks, and the background is blurred at the appropriate times.
  • Organization:
    • Perhaps most importantly in terms of organiztion, Spotify’s latest visual redesign brings with it one of the company’s most requested features: a “collection” view to manage your music.  Called “Your Music,” the new section inside the Spotify sidebar lets you save albums, songs, and artists without needing to create playlists. The feature is particularly useful on mobile, where navigating an epic list of playlists can get tiring. You can now choose to save specific artists or albums for offline listening.
    • The app is very well organized, same as before, just cleaner and more accentuated icons.  Also easier to find your mailbox and other pages via icons.
  • Navigation:
    • The navigation and swipe-age is for the more evolved app and mobile user.  The menu icon still lives on the upper left, however they have added the large-swipe right to access the menu.  You can also now swiper your songs via the track images.  It all seems to function much more quickly.  The Discover page now flows like that of a social app like let’s say Instagram.  I have also noticed that Spotify has integrated SongKick to some of the Artist pages, allowing you to find shows in your area.  This must be a strategic partnership.
• What is working well? What could be improved and how would you improve it?
  • The new imagery (circular artist images and square album covers) work a lot better with the redesign.  It feels a lot more social and makes me want to interact with more, categorize and share more proactively.
  • Perhaps more importantly, Spotify’s latest visual redesign brings with it one of the company’s most requested features: a “collection” view to manage your music. The company in fact announced such a feature back in December 2012, but had failed to come through on delivering it. Now called “Your Music,” the new section inside the Spotify sidebar lets you save albums, songs, and artists without needing to create playlists. The feature is particularly useful on mobile, where navigating an epic list of playlists can get tiring. You can now choose to save specific artists or albums for offline listening.
• Any additional thoughts about the navigation, user flow, visual design?
  • I love it.  Very intuitive.