Music inspires us, it raises our senses
before reading this Blog Post go and listen to your favorite song 🎧
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”
― Maya Angelou
It is well known that music stimulates many areas of the brain, such as those responsible for memory, movement and mood. According to a report by the Global Council on Brain Health (GCBH), music even stimulates the activity of several brain areas at the same time. And all this brain activation produces important health benefits. Researchers have found that music can improve sleep and memory, as well as relieve stress and stimulate thinking skills, all of which help us maintain brain health over the years. You can click on this link if you want to read more about it.
But if you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, let me tell you that I’m going to share with you right now, the result of a project I did on Design Language Research (UX / UI) part of the Web Programming Specializations at Holberton, my favorite Coding School 😊.
And If you have read any of my blogs (before I deleted them all from Linkedin and Medium) you will know that I hate writing them, I don’t know why, I just feel that I’m not good on it at all. But let me tell you this one will be an exception, especially because I really loved this project. It raised my curiosity about a role in the IT industry which I did not know much about and I definitely enjoyed, so I will love to share with you a little bit about the process.
At the beginning what seduced me the most was the topic. I have always been a music lover, I go anywhere with my headphones, walking down the streets with the music playing in my ears. I listen to all kinds of music, and I’m always open to suggestions and get to know new artists. But I’ve never been able to study with music, I’m very absent-minded! That’s why I found challenging to choose Alex to develop an idea and try to improve his Spotify experience.
Alex is a student of Bachelor of Arts in History at Seattle University and lives in a dorm room with his roommate. At night, he usually studies during 3 hours on average, but he finds that he lacks focus when his roommate is there.
He loves music, and his attention tends to shift to the lyrics. To avoid this, he found a few non-lyrics songs but they were too mellow and he began to feel sad. He would like to cut the distraction from his roommate and gain focus while studying, but also get motivated by the tempo.
It was not easy. After reading his user journey map I put myself on his shoes and followed each step to reproduce his user experience, I made a list of all opportunities for improving it.
But I felt that I needed more ideas, a brainstorming, so I took advantage that I was at Holberton and went around the campus looking for new ideas. I asked my peers from cohort 14 and 15 and they all showed up to help me. They told me about their experiences with the platform and their musical preferences. On the pictures you will find some of their tips (I admit I have added more than one playlist to my library).
Of course I was very grateful for the good feedback 💖 but also because once again I have experienced how nice it is to be open to new ideas, and so enlightening to listen other points of view. We also discussed together how important is for most people (potential users, clients, customers) to be able or to have room to give their opinion. That’s how I started to focus on a solution for Alex.
Surfing the internet I discovered that Spotify provides an API service that allows you access data of millions of songs, and download a song’s audio features. These features includes attributes such as a song’s tempo, level of acousticness, and how danceable a song is. Below are detailed descriptions of what those attributes mean:
I investigated a little more and found out that they also have a section on their web platform for users to propose ideas for improvement.
So I was wondering… what about allowing users to give feedback on the music they listen to? Just a brief description, Why not offering the option to add some special attributes characteristic of each song to help other users to find more quickly the kind of music they are looking for? and also help Spotify to reinforce its method of setting preferences.
Et voilà la solution…it may not be the best one, of course, but it is the one I would like to try, we’ll see if it turns out…
Anyway, I’m still open to new ideas, so feel free to leave your comments.
And thanks for reading my Blog! ❤
