Research + Design
Methodology and Insights
For Phase 2 of this project, we conducted extensive research to study the social setting, existing applications/ competitive space, and technological means we can approach this idea. A descriptive summary of our methodology and findings is below, as well as in our research slide deck.
Problem
Despite the massive presence of music in our everyday lives and culture, there aren’t too many ways to share and discover new music. This is especially true for finding out what music people around you listen to. This has created a disconnect in music enthusiasts, leaving many missed connections or potential new discoveries for local artists in the dust. Even the closest friends are often unaware of each other’s music taste, not realizing that they may share the same favorite artists or know who to invite to a concert.
User Research
We surveyed 106 individuals and found strong interest in social music sharing. 59.4% share music weekly or monthly, primarily through in-person gatherings (84.9%), messaging apps (53.8%), and social media (43.4%). While privacy is a concern (65.1%), 75.4% are comfortable sharing their location, suggesting potential for location-based music sharing features.
Competitive Analysis
We conducted competitive analysis on other platforms: Spotify, Airbuds Widget, Spotivity, Sound Cloud. MelodyMap aims to fill the market gap by combining real-time, location-based sharing with interactive social options. This unique combination, coupled with its focus on user experience and community building, differentiates it from existing platforms and positions it as a strong contender in the music sharing market.
While these platforms offer music discovery and some social features, none of them combine real-time, location-based sharing with interactive social options. Therefore, this is the market gap that "Melody Map" aims to fill.
Literature Review
“The Geography of Pokémon GO: Beneficial and Problematic Effects on Places and Movement” details the creative use of geographical data to fuel movement and exploration in a game-based social computing experience of Pokemon Go. Similarly, location-based data is a core component of the user experience in Melody Map. Following the importance of privacy controls highlighted by the user interest survey(79.4% rated 3 or higher) as well as the problematic consequences of location-based data highlighted by the paper, MelodyMap requires careful navigation of the potential implications of tracking users’ geographical data. ​
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Designing a Solution
To tackle the issue of missed musical connections among nearby friends and strangers, we designed MelodyMap to serve as a platform where the music you listen to everyday can become an opportunity to connect with others. By designing a simple social media platform that combines hyper-local location services with real-time music sharing, we aim to encourage social interaction and facilitate new connections between both friends and strangers.
In the initial design of MelodyMap, we borrowed features from Apple’s Find My Friends and Spotify’s Friend Activity tab: the initial prototype would show the user the map around them, along with nearby users/friends and the songs they’re currently playing. To foster social interaction, MelodyMap would allow the user to comment or react on others’ songs. Additionally, users would be able to view the past songs their friends listened to at their location, with the option of creating “mood” playlists from the songs previously played there. This would allow users to not only curate a soundtrack from the music taste of people hyper-local to them, but also opens the door for users to turn those missed connections into conversations with a simple comment or reaction. More on the final app design is in Final Prototype.
User Flow
Below are the user flows for the two main features - Music Sharing and Collaborative Playlist Challenge.
