Most people know Shazam as one of the most popular apps to recognize music. Currently, the average time a user spends on Shazam is 30 seconds. However, Shazam would like to increase user retention to more than 30 seconds. So we want to explore:

“What can the Shazam app offer users besides the ability to recognize music?”

One of the main insights I gathered from an initial conceptual and business analysis of Shazam is that the app started as a service in 2002 where customers dialed from their mobile phone to get music recognized, and the phone would automatically hang up after 30 seconds. Interestingly, 30 seconds is the average time a user currently spends on Shazam. And the way Shazam makes money is by selling their user data and directing their users to buy songs on Itunes.

Parallel to the above process, I proceeded to focus on identifying a group of people to interview about their music listening habits and why they do it. Initially, there were five people selected, two in the USA, two in Latin America and one in the UK.

Some common patterns that emerged after synthesizing the information from the interviews:

My main idea was to focus on placing key existing features through a redesign of the information architecture and add some additional ones so Shazam could increase user retention.

Let me walk you through the design solutions:

Design solution 03:

Provide prominent artist and song information. I created a set of screens where users can find fun and specific information.

Upon usability testing, we discovered the following errors in our design:

Error 01:

0% of users were able to create a custom playlist because there was no screen created by clicking on + button.

Iterated solution added a screen to add songs to a playlist.

After we got results from usability testing, iterated on the design and fixed errors, we created a high-fidelity prototype that shows an update on the design.

This project was a concept project. Upon reflection of this work, I would actually approach the idea of redesigning Shazam from a different angle. My initial goal of increasing user retention was achieved, as the usability testings showed that users were engaged in the app longer beyond the common task of shazaming a song (yes, shazam is a verb!).

However, I would want to focus on user retention rather than trying to increase time users spend on the app; the magic of Shazam is its efficiency.

I will identify a group of users to interview so I can gather new insights. I will perform more usability testings using the current version of the Shazam redesign. I will then combine all that data and ideate new ways to increase user retention.

Questions? Thoughts? Don’t hesitate to get in touch! Email me at: marialuisarayan@gmail.com