Tidal has built custom audio / video technology to enable music lovers to share and listen in unique new ways. The focus was to create a strategic and human-centered design direction on the interaction design and monetization strategy for new and existing feature(s) / functionality.

Discovery

While in discovery I built a comprehensive research plan so I could have an idea of where to begin, goals, outcomes, etc.

The first questions that came to my mind were these:

• Does this feature already exist?

• How would users welcome it?

• Would they find it useful?

• Is it accessible?

• Is this a priority / backlog and what is the level of impact on the business?

Competitive Analysis

Here’s a few key points from the results:

• Spotify is controlling the market thanks to its “freemium” model, the biggest music selection and the variety of features they offer.

• Soundcloud is rising because they offer a lot of exposure to up-and-coming artists as well as a free subscription.

• Apple Music is strong on exclusives and integration with the user’s own music library.

• Apps like Lisn, Vertigo and Liyo rely on other providers like Spotify and Soundcloud and are third-party apps.

None of the above offer a live streaming feature that Tidal is looking to implement with the introduction of TurnUp.

Information Architecture / User Flows

User flows are very useful when it comes to focusing on a specific task the user needs to complete when using the features we built. In this case I created a user flow for the “Create a stream” feature for users that want to host streaming sessions and “Join a stream” feature for guest users that just want to listen and discover new songs and artists.

Ideation

Lo-Fidelity

Working on top of an existing design made me realize that there was a big opportunity to save time. At this point I already knew what features I had to implement so I started creating some annotated rough sketches of the key screens.

Hi-Fidelity

Staying within consistency as much as possible, all the screens I created use styles and guidelines from the already existing Tidal app while implementing the day / light mode.

Validation

After completing the high fidelity wireframes, I made a prototype in figma and then imported it in and animated it with protopie as well as staging and started the process of user testing. Some of the tests were done through Useberry. I was able to build a broad understanding of what the users were thinking and feeling as I asked them to share their thoughts with me.

User Surveys

With the help of the personas I started drafting some questions for the user surveys. The questions were specific to find out more about listening habits and music sharing. Here we see a few key questions and the data gathered from the answers:

Findings / Results

Social sharing feature could potentially improve the lack of social interaction that music streaming services usually have. Artists, music lovers and people who work in the music industry, can engage with each other and share opinions and feedback on songs and new releases. The new feature will have two main purposes:

• Host a streaming session

• Participate in a streaming session

• Share music across multiple messaging applications so others are able to either join if they are not a member therefore increasing memberships / revenue and or are existing members that can increase listening for artists so they are able to earn revenue in turn earning Tidal more revenue.

In Conclusion / key take aways

Social sharing is important and allows for revenue generation for Tidal, its Artist, Customers, Labels, etc.

In addition to dark mode, light / day mode is helpful to provide or offer as an option so users have more accessibility challenges with contrast / color blindness.

A video live streaming feature already used by services like Periscope, Snapchat and others is also worth exploring in the future.

Tidal should also consider implementing a “freemium” model like Spotify, a good way to monetize this could be exploring collaborations with music businesses that would be willing to pay to advertise on the platform so ads would be relevant and useful to users.