Soundtrap/Spotify
Contributions
Research
UX/UI
Prototyping
Team
Lead UX, Design & Prototyping (Myself)
Design support (Kajsa)
Design critique (Central Design team)
Research (Myself, Marianne & Estelle)
Product managing (Sourabh P)
Product managing (Joakim P)
Engineering (Björn S)
Engineering (Pedro N)
Engineering (Song L)
Engineering (Johan)
Engineering (Jonas)
Engineering (Marcin)
Engineering manager (Ashleigh)
Soundtrap developed a fully collaborative environment for musicians to partner up in real time, on the same project. But in order to realise the benefits of this technical upgrade, significant updates had to be made to the UX within the studio.
Collaboration was at the core of Soundtrap’s business. It helped drive the education product in schools while pushing positive usage patterns amongst consumers.
We found that maintaining momentum in a collaboration was key to it’s success. It came down to perventing conflicts, creative safety and enabling feedback among the collaborators.
01
Removing unintended disruptions by distinguishing between shared and private actions.
“Somebody muting my track while I’m working on it is extremely disruptive. I might quit Soundtrap if it keeps happening.”
- Research participant
We discovered that accidentally muting a track that someone else is also working on, is one of the most disruptive things to a smooth collaboration. It even brought upon the risk of users wanting to rage quit Soundtrap.
Approaches & iterations.
The final solution allows users to mute tracks without disrupting other collaborators.
02
Reducing unintended conflicts by visualising every user’s position in real time.
Showing a user’s position in the project prevented others from accidentally overriding their work.
The final solution had user tags appearing on the audio regions that were being worked on. It kept additional UI to a minimum – meaning no flying cursors, owing to the studio’s UI heavy interface.
03
Facilitating feedback and alignment by enabling commenting between collaborators.
Outcomes
These initiatives, spanning multiple quarters, resulted in a 30% increase in a collaboration requests, studio engagement metrics along with positive NPS. It also boosted conversion rates and annual revenue by making Soundtrap a reliable collaborative music production studio.