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My Process

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My Process

Work Experience

Blog

Spotify UX Design Concept - Driving Engagement Through Social Listening

My prototype embeds a seamless “Send to a Friend” experience directly inside Spotify, eliminating app-hopping and preserving the magic of discovery. From the moment you tap the new share icon next to any track, album, or playlist, a lightweight overlay slides up to reveal your Spotify friends—complete with profile pictures and listening status. Select one or more recipients, tap “Send,” and the cover art, artist name materializes instantly in their own “Shared with Me” feed.

(Video Below)


Ownership

Ownership

End-to-end ( UX, Wireframing and Prototyping)

End-to-end
(Product, UX, Engineering)

Build & Workflow

Build & Workflow

Lovable & Cursor

Stack

Stack

Front-end

React.js, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui

Node.js, Express
Ticketmaster API
OpenAI GPT-4o
(intent recognition)

Prototype

Prototype

Working Prototype

Problem Statement

Problem Statement
Despite Spotify’s immense social potential, sharing music remains cumbersome and disjointed, forcing users out of the app and breaking the listening flow.


Key Challenges

  • Multi-App Handoff: To share a song or playlist, users must exit Spotify, open another messaging app, paste or tap a link, then guide recipients back - adding extra taps and waiting time.

  • Engagement Leak: Shared links buried in chat threads go unseen or ignored; users lose the momentum and serendipity of immediate, in-app discovery.

  • No Persistent Social Hub: There’s no central place in Spotify to revisit what friends have sent you—users must hunt through external conversations or notifications, diluting the stickiness of shared recommendations.

  • Missed Real-Time Feedback: Without live indicators, senders can’t know if or when friends have listened, eliminating opportunities for spontaneous co-listening and follow-up engagement.

Despite widespread access to strategic frameworks and case studies, the process of translating business context into actionable corporate strategy remains manual, time-consuming, and inaccessible to non-experts. This creates barriers for students, founders, and operators who need to think strategically but lack the time or structure to do so effectively.


Key Challenges:

  • Strategic Translation Bottleneck: Frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces and McKinsey’s Three Horizons are academically well-known, but rarely applied efficiently in practice. Users must manually analyze case studies, map frameworks, and extract insights, often spending 2-3 days on a single case. This slows down learning, preparation, and decision-making, especially in fast-paced environments like interview prep, case competitions, or startup planning.

  • Fragmented Toolchain: Strategic planning requires switching between PDFs, slide decks, frameworks, and research tools none of which are integrated. This increases context-switching and cognitive load, while limiting users’ ability to iterate on multiple strategy scenarios in real-time.

  • Static Outputs in a Dynamic World: Traditional strategy workflows produce fixed, single-scenario outputs. But today’s business environments are shaped by uncertainty, evolving priorities, and shifting competitive landscapes. Users lack tools that let them dynamically explore how strategies change based on different goals or risk levels.

Solution Positioning and Value Proposition

The Spotify In-App Share positions itself as a native social extension that transforms passive listening into an active, in-app conversation. By embedding a “Send to a Friend” overlay directly within Spotify’s UI, the feature enables users to share tracks, albums, and playlists without ever leaving the app. Recipients see high-fidelity cover art, artist metadata, and a preview snippet in a dedicated “Shared with Me” feed—preserving context and creating a seamless handoff from discovery to playback.

Under the hood, the prototype taps into Spotify’s existing social graph and real-time event bus. When a user taps the new share icon, the overlay fetches their friend list, complete with profile pictures and current listening status. Selecting one or more friends instantly pushes the share record to Spotify’s metadata service, which both queues the track in recipients’ clients and primes cover art for sub-200ms load times. A lightweight notification banner in the Home tab invites recipients to “Play Now,” and the sender’s UI displays a live “listening” badge as soon as the friend taps play—sparking spontaneous back-and-forth engagement.

Competitive Differentiation
Unlike external link sharing via third-party messaging apps—which fragments context, buries links in threads, and incurs extra taps—Spotify In-App Share keeps every interaction inside the music experience. This frictionless flow not only preserves rich context (cover art, autoplay queues, playlist position) but also surfaces a persistent social hub where users can revisit recommendations at any time. By integrating sharing directly into its core listening environment—rather than relying on external platforms—Spotify unlocks higher engagement, deeper session lengths, and a more social listening culture that reinforces habit formation and retention.


The Spotify In-App Share positions itself as a native social extension that transforms passive listening into an active, in-app conversation. By embedding a “Send to a Friend” overlay directly within Spotify’s UI, the feature enables users to share tracks, albums, and playlists without ever leaving the app. Recipients see high-fidelity cover art, artist metadata, and a preview snippet in a dedicated “Shared with Me” feed—preserving context and creating a seamless handoff from discovery to playback.

Under the hood, the prototype taps into Spotify’s existing social graph and real-time event bus. When a user taps the new share icon, the overlay fetches their friend list, complete with profile pictures and current listening status. Selecting one or more friends instantly pushes the share record to Spotify’s metadata service, which both queues the track in recipients’ clients and primes cover art for sub-200ms load times. A lightweight notification banner in the Home tab invites recipients to “Play Now,” and the sender’s UI displays a live “listening” badge as soon as the friend taps play—sparking spontaneous back-and-forth engagement.


Competitive Differentiation
Unlike external link sharing via third-party messaging apps—which fragments context, buries links in threads, and incurs extra taps - Spotify In-App Share keeps every interaction inside the music experience. This frictionless flow not only preserves rich context (cover art, autoplay but also surfaces a persistent social hub where users can revisit recommendations at any time. By integrating sharing directly into its core listening environment—rather than relying on external platforms—Spotify unlocks higher engagement, deeper session lengths, and a more social listening culture that reinforces habit formation and retention.


The Spotify In-App Share positions itself as a native social extension that transforms passive listening into an active, in-app conversation. By embedding a “Send to a Friend” overlay directly within Spotify’s UI, the feature enables users to share tracks, albums, and playlists without ever leaving the app. Recipients see high-fidelity cover art, artist metadata, and a preview snippet in a dedicated “Shared with Me” feed—preserving context and creating a seamless handoff from discovery to playback.

Under the hood, the prototype taps into Spotify’s existing social graph and real-time event bus. When a user taps the new share icon, the overlay fetches their friend list, complete with profile pictures and current listening status. Selecting one or more friends instantly pushes the share record to Spotify’s metadata service, which both queues the track in recipients’ clients and primes cover art for sub-200ms load times. A lightweight notification banner in the Home tab invites recipients to “Play Now,” and the sender’s UI displays a live “listening” badge as soon as the friend taps play—sparking spontaneous back-and-forth engagement.


Competitive Differentiation
Unlike external link sharing via third-party messaging apps—which fragments context, buries links in threads, and incurs extra taps - Spotify In-App Share keeps every interaction inside the music experience. This frictionless flow not only preserves rich context (cover art, autoplay but also surfaces a persistent social hub where users can revisit recommendations at any time. By integrating sharing directly into its core listening environment—rather than relying on external platforms—Spotify unlocks higher engagement, deeper session lengths, and a more social listening culture that reinforces habit formation and retention.


Process

Process

Process

  1. User Research & Problem Definition

    • Interviewed 20 active Spotify users who use external apps to share tracks.

    • Mapped out the “share → open external app → find link → return to Spotify” flow; averaged 5 taps and 15 seconds of friction per share.

    • Validated that inability to share in-app was cited in 80% of community feature requests as a retention blocker.


  2. Opportunity Validation

    • Ran a brief survey in six Spotify fan communities; 90% said they’d use in-app sharing daily if available.

    • Conducted usability tests with a clickable mockup—participants completed a share-and-play flow 50% faster and rated the experience 4.6/5 vs. external sharing.


  3. Feature Scoping & Prioritization

    • Must-haves: In-app “Send” button, friend selector, instant-play notification.

    • Performance boosters: Live “friend opened” activity badge, pre-cached cover art.

    • Delighters: Dedicated “Shared with Me” tab, optional quick text note.


  4. Rapid Prototyping

    • Built a React Native prototype embedding Spotify SDK calls for share and play actions.

    • Used a dummy back end to simulate friend lists and push notifications.

    • Tested internally with 10 power users, iterating UI flows and microcopy (“Send,” “Play Now”).


  5. Infrastructure & Deployment

    • Extended Spotify’s existing metadata service to store share records and play receipts.

    • Leveraged the real-time Spotify design for push notifications and live activity badges.


  6. Beta Testing & Launch

    • Rolled out to select markets; tracked share volume, click-throughs, and session length uplift.

    • Collected qualitative feedback: users loved not leaving the app and revisiting shares in a dedicated feed.

    • After two weeks of iteration and bug fixes (muting spam, fixing caching), launched globally with in-app tutorial and analytics dashboard for ongoing optimization.

Designed by Sumanth Using Framer


2025 | Sumanth Saligram | Product Manager

Schedule a call with Sumanth

LinkedIn

Mail

Designed by Sumanth Using Framer


2025 | Sumanth Saligram | Product Manager

Schedule a call with Sumanth

LinkedIn

Mail

Designed by Sumanth Using Framer


2025 | Sumanth Saligram | Product Manager

Schedule a call with Sumanth

LinkedIn

Mail