Soundcloud is an online music/content streaming service that allows users to either subscribe using a pay per month plan, listen for free with the inclusion of intermittent advertisements, or create and post content for free with certain limitations. SoundCloud emerged as a platform for independent artists to promote themselves and their music.
Overview
The purpose of this case study was to assess different aspects of the usability of the SoundCloud.com website. We chose to focus on the website, in order to gain a clear understanding of the two distinct SoundCloud user types of SoundCloud, that being, those who consume content, and those who create content. The two user types were distinguished as, “Listener”, who are individuals those that use SoundCloud to listen to and discover new music and/or other auditory content, and “Creator”, who are individuals that produce and intend to share their own music and/or other auditory content with an audience. We hoped to learn why or why not each user type chooses to use SoundCloud over other competitor products, as well as functions or features available in competitor products that are not available in SoundCloud, and vice-versa.
GOALS
To evaluate the usability of SoundCloud’s interface
To find out what users find most frustrating about SoundCloud’s interface
To discover the current user needs that are missing in the SoundCloud application.
To evaluate how the SoundCloud experience could be better improved and more user-centric.
Team Members
Franklin Li (UX Researcher)
Iryna Kulyk (UX Designer)
Zhenqi Cai (UX Designer)
Hali Osborne (UX Researcher)
My Role
Developing screener survey and advertisement visuals for recruitment of participants
Conducting a Heuristic Evaluation on the SoundCloud.com website
Developing task/scenario sheets and scripts for each user type
Data-logging & note-taking during sessions & after (analyzing recorded sessions)
Extracting and synthesizing key findings to inform insights and develop recommendations
Developing and co-authoring the Usability Study report resulting in a 160+ page document
Research Methodologies
Surveys
Heuristic Evaluation
Usability Testing
Competitive Analysis
User Interviews
Task Analysis
Personas
Use Cases
Tools
Sketch
Zoom Conferencing Software
Microsoft Excel
Google Surveys
Understanding the User
User Type Subgroups/Condition
8 Listeners
5 “Naïve/Novice” Users
3 “Experienced” Users
8 Creators
5 “Naïve/Novice” Users
3 “Experienced” Users
* Note: Protocol Deviations were made from the original test plan in order to modify to constraints put forth due to COVID-19.
Participant Recruitment
Each participant was first pre-screened by completing a screener survey to ensure that they fit user type recruitment specifications and inclusion criteria.
Why these User Types?
We chose to focus on naïve & experienced users in order to see how well SoundCloud does with attracting and retaining new users and to learn about what it is that SoundCloud offers that appeals to those who continually choose to use it. Experienced users have already developed their own “workarounds” to suit their interactions with the product by conducting their own “trial and error” on features that have usability issues, leading to them being missed. These glaring issues are more likely to be noticed by those naïve/novice users that don’t possess the amount of time spent with the product in order to develop these “workarounds”. For the experienced users, we want to see what kind of usability issues they have with the product and uncover what made them come up with these workarounds in the first place.
Heuristic Evaluation
We conducted a thorough investigation of:
Consistency
Standards
Visibility
User freedom, and
Additional concepts of the website design,
allowing us to understand the potential usability issues that might be encountered during a test, and to prepare task sheets and interview questions that would address these potential issues.
This also gave us an understanding of SoundCloud.com’s quality and usability in terms of the design. While we were able to spot potential errors or design mistakes given our experience as research students, we were also able to prepare usability tests that would strategically test these findings on our participants.
Users were asked to complete tasks such as…
Follow an Artist.
Participants were asked to search for and follow artists and discover new music.
Create a Playlist.
Participants were asked to freely explore SoundCloud and select songs to add to a new playlist.
Add to Playlist and Shuffle.
Participants were asked to manipulate a playlist, auto-play, and shuffle features.
Add tags to a Playlist.
Participants were asked to add tags to customize their playlists.
Save and Track.
Participants were asked to save a playlist and locate where it was stored.
Metrics & Measures
There were three specific measures that we chose to focus on during observations of each usability tasks. These measures included, but were not limited to:
Performance Measures
Did they take the most efficient route?
How many tries did it take users to complete the task?
Were they able to complete the specific task?
Behavioral Measures
Did their posture indicate interest or apathy?
Did they talk aloud or whisper to themselves while trying to work through the task?
Did their facial expressions change at all to indicate an emotional impression?
Subjective Measures
How confident are they in their completion?
Did they experience any “ah-ha” moments?
What level of difficulty would they rate the task?
How well did they think they did?
Key Findings
Follow an Artist.
100% (5/5) of users successfully completed this task.
‘Soundcloud Weekly’ & ‘More of What you like’.
“Usually, if I’m feeling a little bit lazy, since it's the first thing right here, I literally just click the [play] button.”
40% (2/5) of users preferred the SoundCloud Weekly option, positioned as an interactive box with a list of curated tracks, at the very top of their homepages.
‘Up Next’.
0% (0/5) of users accurately located the section specified to showcase up-next & up and coming artists. 100% (5/5) of users failed to scroll down the page to be able to see this section, located in the 5th section from the bottom of the page.
40% (2/5) of users expressed confusion, with 1 naïve/novice user conveying a conflicting background assumption of SoundCloud as an ideal platform for developing artists.
Search bar & filters.
“I appreciate the curated playlists, but If I'm searching for a specific genre for example 'Deep House', I'll type it in the search bar, and select playlists in left side, to see if anyone has created anything”
“It’s like a google search… and the follow button, it’s really similar to other social media sites.”
60% (3/5) of users utilized the search bar, with 1/3 using it as their sole method of search.
1 experienced user, developed a workaround in order to access playlists applicable to their desired genre. 1 naïve/novice user wished for this ability during their initial experience.
‘New Music Now’.
40% (2/5) of users explored this carousel displaying recently uploaded tracks and albums.
Create a Playlist.
80% (4/5) of users successfully completed this task.
‘Add to Playlist’ option hidden behind more button.
If an item is out of sight it’s out of mind for the user.
20% (1/5) of users were unable to locate this option and chose to click on many other items on different pages.
‘Add to Next up’ option blocked by ad.
20% (1/5) of users were unable to access the button. This hindered the ability to distinguish the difference between the
‘Add to Playlist’
vs
‘Add to Next up’
buttons, as they both start with “Add to” and have similar iconography.
Add to Playlist and Shuffle.
60% (3/5) of users successfully completed this task.
Expectation of Autoplay in the button lineup.
0% (0/5) of users were able to locate the Autoplay toggle without assistance. There were differing expectations on where the Autoplay toggle should be between all users, indicating a lack of direction of where to navigate.
60% (3/5) of users expected the ‘Autoplay’ button to be located in-line with the other buttons.
Pop up after adding to ‘Next up’.
“How do you know what songs are going to be next up? I see the pop up here but I’m still confused”
There is no clear indication of the song or songs that are going to be played next within the next up playlist.
Adding Tags to a Playlist.
100% (2/2) of users successfully completed this task.
Expectations of tag text box.
1 user expressed experiencing violation of mental models as they expected to be able to enter tags similarly to entering multiple email addresses into a ‘to’ field. This action was not allowed, clashing with expectations.
Save and Track.
0% (0/2) users successfully completed this task.
Saving a track or playlist by ‘liking’ it.
“It doesn’t really make sense for it to be in ‘likes’. It seems like the same problem as with Twitter. A lot of people of people on Twitter use ‘likes’ as bookmarking things you want to save and I think this is how SoundCloud kind of forces you to use it as well like a save tab.”
Users found a problem with consistency and having to develop workarounds in order to save tracks or playlists that they don’t wish to add to a specific public playlist.
Task Analysis
From the information gathered through data logs and subjective questioning, we measured each task in terms of,
Error rate
Verbal feedback
Behavioral performance
Usability rating, and
Task completion
Task analysis gave us insight into what features of SoundCloud are most often utilized to meet user needs. It also provided our team with an understanding of what features could be removed from SoundCloud without damaging both its value proposition and usability.
Identifying the Problem
During each task, we encountered issues and areas of miscommunication. Users did struggle in terms of:
Navigation
Visual momentum
Visibility of system status
Visual hierarchy
Recognition over recall
Violation of mental models
Understanding the value proposition of distinct features
Opportunities & Insights
Our team was able to take our findings and provide user-centric opportunities to improve upon the issues and error encountered during our tests, providing us with an opportunity to suggest improvements to SoundCloud.com by enhancing its customizability and user experience based on users’ preferences.
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