Apple Music Evaluation

@ University of Toronto

To review Apple Music's ease-of-use, a heuristic evaluation was conducted using information architecture guidelines and best practices. Several areas of improvement were then identified, each accompanied by design recommendations.
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This project was completed as a course requirement for the Information Architecture course.

Background and Goals

Pretend that a client plans to build an audio streaming application. Before doing so, they wish to learn from the design choices of one of their future competitors, Apple Music. They requested for an evaluation to be done on the app, which will serve as a foundation for their own interface design. They wish to create an application that fits in the current market, and to build their understanding of potential users' characteristics (usage, needs, etc.) through the lens of their competitor.

To achieve our client's request, below are several research questions that we need to address (numbers do not represent order).

• What are common design practices in the audio streaming industry?
• What are the characteristics of Apple Music users' mental model?
• How might we improve on Apple Music's design weaknesses?

Method

Heuristic evaluation method was chosen to answer the research questions above. To specify, the evaluation was conducted based on information architecture guidelines. In addition, Figma was utilized as a digital board for brainstorming and synthesizing the analysis of Apple Music's interface.

Key Learnings

Compared to websites or desktop/laptop apps, the scope of mobile app navigation is much more limited due to its smaller screen size. Thus, it's extremely important that all of the main navigation categories (usually present on the bar at the bottom of the screen) are straightforward and purposeful. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case for Apple Music. There were several items inside the "Listen Now", "Browse", and "Radio" categories that were overlapping or even identical. These overlap can cause the distinction between the categories to fade away or decrease, so users are left confused about where each categories will navigate them to.

A recommendation would be to avoid having identical items inside different categories. In addition, conducting a card sorting exercise with users can help through: 1) identifying ambiguous items, 2) gathering insights into users' mental model, and even 3) discovering category label alternatives that makes more sense to users.
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However, Apple Music does well in utilizing location feedback on their main navigation (e.g. coloring the corresponding icons on the bottom bar red), which informs users where they currently are in the app. This helps prevent users from feeling lost and disoriented while using the software.
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To access more findings and recommendations, please refer to the evaluation's research report.

Research Impact

• Demonstrated visual examples of common design practices in the audio streaming industry (e.g. hub and spoke structure for the genre/search page).
• Emphasized the importance of synchrony between users' mental model and the app's navigation categorization.
• Provided concrete and real-life examples of interface design approaches to avoid that might lead to users' confusion.

My Learnings

• The screen size you're working with impacts the way you communicate information on your platform. For websites and laptop/desktop apps, there's more space to show information. However, for mobile apps, we need to be more strategic in deciding what to show first and how to show it. Which information is most important to relay? Should we put it on the bottom, on the top-right corner, or somewhere else?
• Personalization is a popular approach to increase users' stickiness and it's commonly used in the audio streaming industry. For the audio streaming industry, personalization can be in the form of: 1) personalized playlists, 2) list of genres ordered by most frequently-listened, 3) playlist and album recommendations, etc.
• When analyzing interfaces, it's difficult to refer to specific visual aspects by text. It's challenging to find the words to explain the asset you're referring to (e.g. bottom navigation, floating utility navigation, etc.). Sometimes your word choices can also lead to the audience having different conclusions of the point you're trying to make. Not to mention, we also need to make sure that the terms we use is understandable for our clients, who are most of the time non-UI/UX people.