Find music you feel, not just listen to.
Involvement
UI/UX
User Research
Visual Design
Prototyping
Software
After Effects
Illustrator
ProtoPie
Figma
Project Type
Personal
Duration
4 weeks
A new listening experience for Pandora aligning music with emotion for a more immersive listening journey.
Pandora App Redesign
Pandora fails to curate music with emotional accuracy, and it's visual design is just as plain and unintuitive as its interactions.
My goal is to connect users to songs that resonate with their emotions and allow the interface to reflect and amplify those moments with a smoother, more responsive design.
Improving music discovery with an engaging, intuitive design.
Challenge
A common theme among Pandora users: difficulty finding music that suits their exact mood for daily activities.
Setting the mood is important.
User Research
If I don't have the right music to match what I'm doing, I just can't function properly.
A 20-year-old musician
The Pandora app is primarily used to discover new music with curated radio stations. The user flow includes three main tasks . . . that are quite problematic.
On the hunt for good music . . . and lost.
1
Search for songs, artists, or genres.
2
Create a radio station,
add to your collection.
3
Edit your personal collection of stations.
Trying to play a specific searched song redirects users to ads or randomized, unrelated songs in a radio station.
Hover below for more insights.
Other large music platforms used more advanced algorithms to find similar songs based on genre, and the listening experience was more customizable, yet the overall designs were still cluttered and visually overwhelming.
Is it easier to find music elsewhere?
Competitive Analysis
Apple Music
Spotify
Strengths
Pain Points
Easy navigation + viewing of songs
Short button clicking sequence
Create custom playlists
Cluttered discovery features
Suggests music only by artist and genre similarity
Apple Music
Screenshots from Apple Music
Getting organized with key intentions and interactions.
Process
I created a UX Pyramid to set my priorities straight and guide my decisions concerning the user flow of this design.
Customer Benefit
UX Pillars
Signature Experiences
curate music with more emotional accuracy
insight into listening habits and emotional state
fun and engaging interactions
personalized, emotion oriented interface
visualizing music with color and shape
track music + emotions throughout time
discovering your exact moods in every musical moment
Visualizing the look and feel of the interface by moodboarding.
Ideation
I started by developing 5 key words (later narrowed down to 3) to guide my creative decisions.
I then put together a moodboard of inspirational images, showcasing textures, colors, and themes I planned to implement in my design.
Passionate
Mystical
Dazzling
Expressive
Open
Revealing
JALDI
Brainstorming and building.
Original sketching, visuals, wireframing, & iterations.
Home/discover page design ideas
Hand-painted "Mood Music" background gradients
Early user flow wireframe sketches
