Designing for the Modern Music Consumer - Onboarding and Loyalty Building of New Users to a Music Streaming Service

Abstract

GOAL The topic for the thesis is user onboarding and loyalty building of new users to Tidal through exploration of alternative solutions to today's product. The goal is to assist new users in quickly being able to navigate the service effortlessly, while aiming to create user engagement resulting in the users fully adopting the service. Loyalty building is explored through designing for users' emotions and behavioral patterns related to music services, by creating a solution that forms habits and stores value for the user.

METHOD I have made use of principles from both interaction and service design, while designing for user experience, with emphasis on qualitative research to comprehend users daily routines and emotions linked to listening to and discovering music. I have conducted semi-structured interviews, a longitudinal user study, literature reviews and benchmarking of music services and onboarding processes. I applied prinsciples from behavioral and emotional design to explore how a digital service can be designed to form habits and user engagement. Concepts were developed through a solution driven iterative process with user involved prototyping, inspired by Lean UX principles. FINDINGS The user research revealed complex user habits related to listening to and discovering music in everyday life. Additionally I gained insights on the emotional aspects music have on personal levels. Related to adopting Tidal as a new user, the user study disclosed challenges related to navigation of the service, and lack of supporting users behavioral patterns of discovering music and listen to music instantly. The conceptual phase therefore addressed exploration of a more intuitive service structure and improved onboarding approaches. Additionally I focused on how Tidal could assist users in discovering music through developing initiatives to form habits and make the user invest in the product.

RESULT The project resulted in a redesign of the music player with a new structure, new onboarding process and behavioral elements to form habits of finding new music. Additionally, a new website was designed to propose a shift towards product visibility to help new users quicker grasp the concept of Tidal.