Bucketing the content categories to ease exploration.
With the evolution of social media platforms like TikTok, Helo, Instagram, etc vertical scroll to consume content/feed has become natural. We don’t feel tired even in scrolling vertically for hours to consume the content. It has become our habit like this for the last couple of years now.
Typical smartphone users scroll between 201.48 and 257.75 times per day. Using our one-handed scroll lengths, this equates to 854.44 inches for a 4.3-inch screen or 890.54 inches for a 5.5-inch screen.
Reference: https://www.leozqin.me/how-many-miles-will-you-scroll/
The Problem
Currently, I am working for a music streaming platform as a design lead that has got more than 150M+ MAU (Monthly Active Users), and what we observed that most of the users (Can’t share exact no.) are not scrolling much after 4–5 scrolls which is actually strange. Looking at the study which says vertical scroll is natural but with our app, it’s not the case. Take a snapshot of the current app homepage experience.
To understand the problem in detail we did research with real participants and got a very useful insight that the kind of content we’re providing after 4–5 scroll is not relevant and also there is no motivation as well by the time they reach 5th scroll, so they either play music or leave the app by thinking there’s nothing for them at this point in time.
As they say “Too many choices can leave you dissatisfied and disappointed”
So to break the paradigm of the vertical scroll (which is not working with our product) we understood the problem and thought of providing a solution that can actually help users to explore the music of their mood and choice.
The Approach
The Fogg Behavior Model says that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.
What we observe here is that both motivation and trigger are missing with our current experience.
To solve this we thought of introducing the different categories of music (based on the mood and consumption and also to make it more personalized experience) as top navigation which can actually motivate the users to explore and consume the music.
The Process
We as a UX team did card sorting exercises with more than 50 users to identify the categories we should introduce.
We come across many important categories such as
- Romance,
- Party,
- Fresh Hits,
- Old Hits,
- Languages etc.
The Solution
We understand the problem, followed the process and accordingly create the solution. We also introduced filters as a part of the solution along with the top navigation as well to make it easier for a user to select the content of his/her choice.
Currently, the top 4–5 visible categories are actually helping users to find the relevant music content in a lesser time compared to the time they were spending browsing vertically.
Have a look at the design solution and would love the hear the feedback.
Download the Gaana App and share your suggestions/feedback at sahils123@gmail.com.