In this project, I would like to focus on a context problem solving for a core Tencent product iteration.
Date: 2012 | Role: Interaction Designer | Responsibility: Wireframes, User research
Introduction
It is a music streaming application for smart phones, which aims to help the user create personal music station, including music exploration, listening, download and sharing features.
Background
We got this project at the end of 2011 for a version upgrade. At that time, the major mobile device in China was iPhone 3gs and iphone 4, the smart phone just began to be popular in China, public wifi was limited and cellular data from mobile operator was expensive. All the factors let us think about how can we support offline listening? means an outdoor environment without wifi connected?
The Data
Key insights
Over 40% people listen to music during commute that is usually off-line environment, and most people prefer to pre-download songs to their phone before going out.
People want to share songs to their family and friends, but are limited by complex tools.
People care about cellular data. They prefer to listen to music in Wi-Fi connected environment.
Pain points
How to support offline listening?
How can we maximize music spread among devices? How can we make the sharing feature more efficient and intuitive?
How can we handle the environment change during listening? How to alleviate or provide protection for user’s worries to prolong product enjoyment?
Ideation
After analysis the data, we came up with three sweet features based on the group insights and opportunity space.
Offline mode: we designed a feature which not only improved the downloading function also support the offline listening. The system is able to automatically cache the songs played with fewer kilobytes when the switcher is off. When users pursue high quality music, they can download them as usual but automatically when it is on.
Flute music sharing: when people share music through original song, it is hard to recognize and lead to fail. We improved this function by using unique identifier for each song, which is similar with the sound of flute, so that the receiver's phone can instantly recognize this identifier and find out matched song in the database.
Web change notification: users care their cellular data, they prefer listen to music in Wi-Fi environment. But sometimes the environment changes and users may not notice it. We designed a notification feature when people change their Internet environment from Wi-Fi to 2G/3G to help them avoid extra charge.
Feature redesign
