Diary Study
Music Streaming Platform
Canada | 24 Participants | Diary Study | Interviews
Research Goals
The client was exploring new social features to drive engagement through the facilitation of making meaningful connections between listeners.
Rather than pivoting to become another social media platform. The client was motivated to create a new experience for users to share music and inspire one another.
Project Context
24 participants (6 friendship pairs and 12 individuals) between 18-35 years old.
2 x 30 minute follow-up interviews were conducted with 12 participants to further evaluate.
Research Objectives
Research Process
Canada | 24 Participants | 6 Pairs | 12 Solo | 14 Days
All participants took part in the 14 activities, whilst only 12 participants were interviewed.
Diary Activities
14 Activities | 24 Participants | Mixed Media
To capture how the participants engaged with the existing platform and their experience using the prototype, participants were assigned daily activities.
In total participants took part in 14 activities, using a mixed media approach. A mixed media approach was deliberately chosen to reduce participant fatigue over the 14 days, keeping engagement varied and ensuring the data captured authentic behaviour rather than formulaic responses.
Activities ranged from recording videos, storyboards, surveys, crazy 8 sketches, voice memos and written entries.
Interviews
2 Rounds | 12 Participants | 30 Minutes
Round 1:
The participants' experience was explored using the features within the prototype. As well as, the participants desire for the future state of the platform in terms of sharing music and connecting with peers.
Round 2
This round was used to to gain deeper insight into how the participants were discovering and sharing music. Their opinions on the difference between social media and being social online, as well as their experience using the prototypes.
Analysis
The analysis process consisted of thematic analysis. Whereby activities and transcripts were closely examined to identify common themes and patterns.
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Once the data has been coded the themes are then reviewed to explore potential ideas for recommended solutions.
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Using Miro an affinity map was created to assist with organising the data and recommendations.
An insights report was then presented to the client, accompanied by a highlight reel to bring the insights to life.
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Insights
A few of the insights that were presented to the client.
Tension between Sharing and Performance
While participants were open to effortless music sharing. There was clear resistance to features that felt performative or overly similar to social media.
Implication:
Social features risked undermining the core listening experience if they introduced pressure to perform or curate identity.
Engagement and Feedback
Participants enjoyed discovering songs they did not know their friends would listen to.
They wanted to be able to passively react in-app to their friends listening choices.
Implication:
To ensure interactions were authentic and unfiltered they have to be low-pressure, light weight interactions.
Social vs Social Media
Participants viewed social media as performative rather than authentic. Whereas, being social online is joining a platform to connect through intentional discussion or shared identity.
Implication:
Clear guardrails for future feature development to ensure the team avoid drifting into social media territory.
Outcome
By revealing a fundamental tension between the proposed features and what users actually valued, the research prevented the platform from drifting away from its core proposition. Saving significant development resource and keeping the product focused at a critical stage.
Reflections & Challenges
Achieving a 100% completion rate across a 14-day diary study is rare. The main challenge was sustaining participant engagement throughout. As they had to complete an activity everyday, it was crucial that the activities were interesting and varied quite a bit, day by day.
In the end we had one pair drop out after the first day, the rest of the participants including the replacement pair had a 100% completion rate with all of the activities.