SiriusXM Artist Stations
Towards the end of 2018 SiriusXM had acquired Pandora Media. We began to look for opportunities to cross integrate both of our services. This project spanned four months from research to launch. Launched in May 2019.
My Role
Product Design Lead
Tasks
Wireframing, Usability Testing, Visual Design, Motion Design, User Flows.
Launched
May 2019
Looking for overlap
I worked closely with cross functional partners from both Pandora and SiriusXM.
Key discovery insights
Majority of SiriusXM subscribers enjoy the serendipitous nature of radio, they are more interested in discovery than curation.
Approximately 70% of SiriusXM subscribers had used Pandora in the last year.
Users wanted to be able to listen to more music by or similar to what they are hearing on the radio.
Goal
Provide users with a more personalized music discovery experience.
Leverage Pandora’s technology and promote the brand.
Solution
Integrating one of Pandora's core features “Artist Radio” made sense because our users are already accustomed to and enjoy the serendipitous nature of radio. This allowed them to dive into music from or similar to a specific artist right from listening to radio. And for the first time this gave the user more control over what they were listening to, which we felt would be very valuable in driving more user engagement.
Constraints
The feature had to be branded with the Pandora logo or naming.
Users could only create 250 artist radio stations.
When an artist station is created for the first time it is instantly created.
This feature had to fit seamlessly within the existing SiriusXM experience.
The feature had to be able to scale for future added functionality.
Flows
Ideation & Testing
I tested different versions of the pivot point for artist stations from the radio Now Playing screen. By far the contextual menu made the most sense to users as it is a fairly standard convention across audio streaming services.
The “Create” Button
There was quite a bit of debate over this one button that would be located on the Now Playing screen. One of my initial proposals was to have artist stations live in a contextual menu along with other existing functions within the Now Playing experience. It was something I had fought hard for because it tested very well with users and really started to streamline and simplify the overall Now Playing experience.
However, I received some valuable feedback around our business goals, “We just acquired Pandora and are integrating this big new feature in the SiriusXM experience. We want to celebrate this new feature and make it very visible instead of hiding it within a menu.”
From a business and marketing stand point stakeholders wanted a high level of exposure for this feature within the experience.
Iterating THE Button
I came up with different ways we could celebrate and bring the feature forward. Ultimately the team was all in agreement with the “Create Pandora Station” button. Using the term “Create” was important because this implied personalization for the user. Whereas if it had just said “Artist Station” users felt that these channels were pre created and not personalized for them.
I started to pull in some cues from the Pandora branding that would fit into the SiriusXM experience.
This is the final incarnation of the “Create button”. Must have gone through 20 variations.
Through testing I also found taking users directly to the station gave them the impression these were pre created by SiriusXM. I added a loading screen that would show the first time a user creates a station for a specific artist. This screen was not necessary from a technical standpoint, but provided a lot of value in driving the idea these stations are personalized for the user.
Interaction
Micro interaction for when a user likes or dislikes a song. In addition to highlighting the selected option I also thought it would be a good idea to provide haptic feedback since thumbing up/down does not provide audio feedback like the play/pause and skip buttons.
