Designer language — validate
The proposal for this project is to discover if the solution I came up with, works or it doesn’t.
Here is the Figma link if you want to check it out
I recruited 5 participants to whom I explained a few tasks they have to perform.
- 1st: Get access to the study mode.
- 2nd: Start the study mode
- 3rd: Discover the study mode
First participant — Mary 25 (Chemistry student)
The first task was completed successfully, she entered the study mode without any problem. She said that was easy and kind of obvious to get access to it.
The second task was completed too but there was a problem, she asked me why the bar of “what do you study?” was already filled in and I basically told her that since it was a test there was a static datum which currently is “software development”.
While doing the third task she was impressed because she thought it was a great opportunity to share music with people from her same career, she also acceded to the filter mode and that was great because she knew how to exit this mode and what it was supposed to do.
Second participant — Laury 22 (Industrial Engineer)
She found really quickly the study button and since she was already familiarized with the Spotify desktop app she realized at first what was my proposal.
She acceded really fast to the study mode, she was really excited about this since she had done some researches on how music can help to improve concentration. She understood since the beginning it was a test for a user experience and that was nice because she was relating all the actions she was doing and how they could be improved.
Third participant — John 21 (Medicine student)
He had never used Spotify before so he was a bit confused about the proposal I made to improve the experience of students while using it. He wasn’t even that good at using platforms since he had invested his full time in his career which is very demanding. Nevertheless, he got to enter the study mode successfully, he said that was pleasant to see how the button changed while hovering.
The second one was problematic to him because he really wanted to write down his career and after that press start, I had to tell him that it wasn’t possible because it was just a test for a case, it wasn't dynamic so it couldn’t be changed. He let it pass and pressed the button “start”
While discovering the study mode John found an excellent opportunity to share music with binaural waves which has been proven to improve concentration, boost memory and long-term memory, and also strengthen connections among networks within the brain.
Fourth participant — Pilar 25 (Electronic Engineer)
She used to use Spotify mobile app but she hadn’t ever used the desktop one so it was a chance for her to explore it in deep, first she wanted to discover the actual desktop app knowing how it is and wanted to know why I was trying to propose a solution for a student.
At first, she found it was intuitive the study mode button, and accessing through it was cool as she said. As she knew, it was just a prototype and had been familiarized with this platform before so she started the mode and kept on exploring the prototype. She said it could be a nice addition to the platform but she would hesitate about using it since she cannot study while listening to music even if there are no lyrics.
Fifth participant — Cristian 22 (Arts student)
He does love Spotify, he spends almost 6 h per day navigating through the app while listening to his favorite playlists, also he told me that he has a similar problem and would like to spend less time searching for the correct playlist at study time.
He entered super fast to the study mode and pressed “enter” without hesitation, the process was really quick with him and he seemed to be familiarized with the app, also he understood that it was just a prove so he didn’t try to put his career on the bar which was nice.
While he was navigating through it he told me that the filter was nice but it was kinda difficult to know that it was like a button he told me that it could have been better to implement a dropdown instead.
Conclusion
I reckon it was a partial success. A lot could improve functionality and user experience, all of the five participants really liked this mode, but many of them simply won’t use it since it’s kind of tricky to concentrate doing hard tasks while listening to music, however, they could give it a try to specific music for studying and avoid distractions.
