Native App (iOS) Design
A Spotify integration of artist royalty investment tools that are working to democratize access to investing in music.
Role
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UX Designer
Visual Design Lead
Deliverables
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UX Research
Usability Testing
User Flow
User Interface
Wireframes
High-fidelity prototype
Final Solution
Native mobile iOS app with the transaction experience of the integration and partnership between Vezt and Spotify. We built a design system for Vezt that aligns with Spotify's for easy adoption and the potential of a future buyout. Specific deliverables would include 3 main flows of the new feature:
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Integrating Vezt into Spotify
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Reading investment/market trends
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Purchasing/selling shares
Design Process
Challenges
Spotify's core product does not allow artists the opportunity to live off of their art and at the same time, their company's bottom line is in the red. They are actively searching for ways to diversify their revenue streams while staying true to their broadcasted mission and value statements.
Vezt trademarked the ISO (initial song offering), but their product lacks access to the necessary data and audience to motivate market shifts in listed equities.
The business's goal is to turn fans into advocates, however, their site traffic is in its infancy and years/billions of marketing dollars behind more established music platforms like Spotify.
Personas
Profit-driven investor
Motivations
💸
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Monetary return
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Invest with Entertainment purpose
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Invest companies they support
Frustrations
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Lack of the performance metrics to manage risks
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Low frequency finding companies they want to support
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Need to jump between different platforms to invest
Emotionally Driven Music Fan
Motivations
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“Investments” with personal gain
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Supporting artists they care about
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Investing based on trends and friends
🎵
Frustrations
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Not knowing if their money is supporting their artist directly
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Impersonal music experiences
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Spotify currently diversifying revenue streams outside of music, but the audience wants more "artist-centric design"
Synthesis
Investors are looking to outperform the market and absorb diversified options that provide safety to their overall portfolio. However, currently there are limited options of non-correlated assets and investment opportunities that satisfy both monetary return bottom lines and emotional stake. Investors are seeking to protect their portfolios while maximizing monetary and emotional returns.
Opportunity
How to satisfy investors' both monetary return bottom lines and emotional stake?
How to diversify Spotify's revenue streams?
How to meet Vezt's business goal which is to turn fans into advocates?
Design Hypothesis
We will create a retail marketplace for music rights, moving the industry from B2B to B2C and adopting conventions from existing stock trading and investment apps, our product will better support Spotify's core business goals and motivate profit-driven investors via non-correlated music assets. These high-performing investments (trend towards outperforming traditional SMP 500) simultaneously provide artists with more efficient forms of direct support.
The Solution
Integrate Vezt into Spotify
Offering profit-driven investors a new investing experience by integrating an investment feature to a music streaming app (Spotify) which would enhance the cross-platform drop-off rate of users jumping between different apps and allow them to stream music and invest in artist royalty in a single platform.
Reading investment/market trends in Vezt
We absorbed conventions from other investment platforms and visualized Information that are necessary trigger points for profit-driven investors to purchase, including performance, description, streams, audience, news, about the artist, top songs, and people also own.
Purchasing/selling shares in Vezt
We designed the whole flow of purchasing and sharing stocks. Users can select between shares and dollars, view order detail, manage their investment portfolio in Vezt, and listen to their investment portfolio list in Spotify.
Onboarding pages in-between
Onboarding pages are designed in the beginning and when user switch from Spotify to Vezt to provide a more intuitive user experience.
Iteration
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Redesigned the reading trends page in order to identify Vezt branding and main functions.
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Rearranged onboarding pages to avoid frictions jumping between different apps.
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Absorbed conventions from other investment platforms to visualize data eventually offer non-correlated/ high performing investment opportunities for investors & music fans.
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Optimized the user flow of purchasing and selling stock to meet industry standards.
Takeaways
Working on a project that we all are passionate about was a great experience for me. From initial research to final deliverables, I enjoyed every stage we worked together as a team. Learning from two other team members was another valuable lesson for me as I was able to think and articulate topics critically, and solving problems via an overarching approach.
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Talking with artists, music fans, and investors at different phases of design has helped us to eliminate prejudgment and personal assumptions, especially when we were getting too excited about a certain concept or lack of understanding of music and financial industries. Leading the visual design has also been a challenge for me when it comes to the partnership and integration of two apps. We all know there is room for improvement such as running accessibility testing and conducting a second round of usability testing to see if we solved previous issues.