Table of Contents

Section 1: Introduction:...................................................................................................................1

Section 2: Guidelines and Standards:..............................................................................................2

Section 3: Usability Report:.............................................................................................................4

3.1 Comparison of YouTube Music and Spotify with a conclusion to the usability report:.....15

3.2 Key guidelines to incorporate into the mid-fidelity prototype:............................................16

Section 4: User Persona:................................................................................................................18

Section 5: Scenarios:......................................................................................................................21

Section 6: Prototype Design:.........................................................................................................23

6.1 Evaluation:...........................................................................................................................24

6.2 Screenshots of the mid-fidelity prototype:...........................................................................25

Section 7: Conclusion:...................................................................................................................27

Reference:......................................................................................................................................28
Table of Figures:
Figure 1: YouTube's visibility of playlist creation..................................................................................7
Figure 2: Spotify visibility of playlist creation.........................................................................................8
Figure 3: YouTube Match between the system and the real world.......................................................9
Figure 4: Spotify Match between the system and real world...............................................................10
Figure 5: YouTube's user control and freedom....................................................................................11
Figure 6: Spotify user control and freedom...........................................................................................12
Figure 7: Consistency and standards of YouTube and Spotify............................................................13
Figure 8: Error prevention of YouTube Music and Spotify.................................................................15
Figure 9: Flexibility and effectiveness of YouTube Music and Spotify...............................................16
Figure 10: Weight Table.........................................................................................................................17
Figure 11: Weight Bar of Spotify and YouTube Music........................................................................18
Figure 12: User Persona 1.......................................................................................................................21
Figure 13: User Persona 2.......................................................................................................................22
Figure 14: Two Concrete Scenarios.......................................................................................................23
Figure 15: Mixify design pattern............................................................................................................25
Figure 16: Mixify's visibility of system status........................................................................................26
Figure 17: Error prevention aspect of Mixify.......................................................................................27
Figure 18: Interactions of the mid-fidelity prototype...........................................................................27
Figure 19: Songs list for Playlist.............................................................................................................28
Figure 20: Playlist sharing option..........................................................................................................28
Section 1: Introduction:

YouTube Music is one of the major video and music streaming services that are recognized
globally. Spotify is most likely the most popular music streaming service in the world. Music
Streaming services have become really popular in recent years. The purpose of this report is to
critically evaluate the usability of these two music streaming services (free versions) with a focus
on creating new playlists with these services. The two services will be evaluated in contention
with the heuristic guidelines (Nielsen, Shneiderman, Benyon) mentioned in the lectures. There
will be one guideline chosen from these three which is Nielsen’s heuristics. The evaluation and
the research findings would guide the development of a mid-fidelity prototype for a new music
service which will be based on the scenario of playlist creation. The identification and relevant
background information of the users using this service would be presented through two UX
personas with proper justification. There is a demonstration of the user experience design of the
proposed music service which will be created via Axure RP.

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Section 2: Guidelines and Standards:

Guidelines (Shneiderman et al., 2018) are more of an average level and narrow-focused
regarding design evaluation whereas principles are more widely applicable, detailed, and more
practical in terms of evaluating designs. There are three principles that the course mentioned
which are Nielsen’s Heuristics, Twelve Design Heuristics by Benyon, and Shneiderman’s Eight
Golden Rules. All three principles provide useful guidelines for designing, comparing, and
analyzing user interfaces and experiences but each principle has its own strength and
combinations which helps designers to design suitable user experiences. Twelve design
heuristics (Benyon, 2019) are more concerned with the human-centered perspective. These
twelve principles are divided into 4 sets, the first set is 1-4 which is concerned with learnability
which means ease of learning and remembering, the second set is 5-7 which is concerned with
ease of use, the third set is 8-9 which is concerned with the effectiveness, the fourth set is 10-12
which is concerned with accommodation that means establishing the differences between people
and respecting those differences (Benyon, 2019). Ben Shneiderman first published the “Eight
Golden Rules of Interface Design” in the first edition of his book “Designing the User Interface:
Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction”. Shneiderman’s principles have been
widely used in the design industry in terms of designing interfaces that are easy to use and
optimize the user experience. The principles concentrate on increasing users’ productivity by
dispensing simplified data-entry procedures, intelligible displays, and fast informative responses
to increase the notion of proficiency, understanding, and command over the system
(Shneiderman et al., 2018). Nielson’s heuristics also known as “10 Usability Heuristics for User
Interface Design” were introduced by Jakob Nielson in 1990 (Nielson et al., 1990). Nielsen’s
heuristics (Nielsen et al., 1990) are general guidelines that are used to help designers identify
usability problems in the design. These guidelines are widely used in the design industry as a
framework to evaluate and improve the usability of digital web-based products.

This report will be using Nielsen’s heuristics to evaluate the two famous music streaming
services YouTube Music and Spotify following on to the prototype which will be created and
evaluated as well according to the same guidelines. Nielsen’s heuristics are widely used to focus
on the usability testing of digital web-based products as the report will evaluate YouTube
Music’s web-based platform and the prototype that will be developed will also be web-based.

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The goal of the usability testing would be to identify general usability problems regarding
playlist creation and some other scenarios of YouTube Music and Spotify. Neilsen’s heuristics
cover a broad range of usability issues which would be helpful for the author to evaluate the
usability of the music streaming services and the prototype which will be incorporated according
to these usability testing. Neilsen’s heuristics are a set of ten principles for evaluating the
usability of user interfaces. Among them, visibility of system status, match between system and
the real world, user control and freedom, consistency and standards, error prevention, and help
and documentation are relevant in terms of evaluating the usability of the playlist creation feature
and some other scenarios in YouTube Music and Spotify. Even though it will be appropriate to
do the usability evaluation using all the 10 heuristics but because of time constraints and word
count limits this report would not be able to use all 10 guidelines. In terms of assessing YouTube
Music and Spotify’s playlist creation feature and some other features, it is imperative that the
design should always keep users informed, should speak the user’s language, they should
maintain consistency in learnability, should prevent users from making errors, should be flexible
and efficient to use (Nielsen, 1994). According to Nielson (1994), in order to test these aspects,
the most appropriate set of guidelines are “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design”.

The list that is chosen to enable the author to undertake a heuristic evaluation which is from
Nielson’s heuristics are:

 Visibility of system status (H1)

 Match between system and the real world (H2)
 User control and freedom (H3)
 Consistency and standards (H4)
 Error prevention (H5)
 Flexibility and efficiency of use (H6)

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Section 3: Usability Report:

The report will evaluate YouTube Music’s and Spotify’s playlist creation features which are two
of the most popular music streaming services globally. The evaluation will be based on Nielsen’s
heuristics which are widely used to identify usability problems and provide suggestions for
improving the design of user interfaces.

Visibility of system status (H1): Even if you tube is probably world’s most popular music
streaming and broadcasting service, but it has some major issues regarding the playlist creation
feature. According to Nielsen (1994), the design should be expressive and give a clear expression
of occurring activities with accurate reactions within a reasonable amount of time.

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 Image 1

Image 2

Playlist
creation
from 3
dot
menu

Figure 1: YouTube's visibility of playlist creation

There are two images in figure 1 where one is the Home Page of YouTube Music, and the other
image shows the 3-dot menu which appeared after clicking on the 3 dots. There is a “Add to
playlist” option, by clicking on it the playlist creation process begins on YouTube Music.
Analyzing the first two images it can be commented that this is a big visibility issue where the
user has no visibility of information whatsoever about what is going on.

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 Image 1

Clear
Visibility
of playlist
creation

Image 2

Informing
users of
what is
going on

Informing
users
what is
Figure 2: Spotify visibility of playlist creation going on

There are two images in figure 2 which shows the visibility of the system of the music streaming
service Spotify where there are 2 images. Image 1 shows the playlist creation option is clearly

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visible to the user. Image 2 shows after adding a song to the playlist, the song is visible to the
user as well. These are informing the users of what is going on during the playlist creation.

The heuristic evaluation of the visibility of the system between YouTube and Spotify is that
Spotify’s user experience design related to the playlist option has a much clear visibility
compared to that of YouTube. Figure 1 and Figure 2 are the visual justification of the argument.

Match between the system and the real world (H2): According to Nielsen (1994), the design
should be able to express the user’s language for instance, using words, phrases, and ideas
known to the user. More like real-world familiarity with terms, concepts, icons, etc.

Figure 3: YouTube Match between the system and the real world

Figure 3 shows YouTube using real-life terms like “Add to playlist” and “Play” button which is
according to the H2 heuristics.

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 Figure 4: Spotify Match between the system and real world

The red marked boxes identify the H2 heuristics guidelines for Spotify as “+ Create Playlist” is a
real-life terminology, the big green play button is like a play button in a real-life music player,
“add” a meaningful terminology which informs the users to add songs to the playlist.

Even though YouTube does follow the H2 guidelines but compared to Spotify and H2 heuristic
evaluation YouTube’s design is much weaker than Spotify’s.

User Control and Freedom (H3): Ji et., al (2006) said, “The users must be able to control the
system by their own decisions.” Relevant to the report, this elaborates on the total freedom of
users while making playlists & songs and deleting them.

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 Figure 5: YouTube's user control and freedom

.Figure 5 shows how YouTube Music gave full freedom to its users to share their playlists
publicly or keep it private.

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 Controlling
adding and
removing
songs

Controlling
creating
and
deleting
playlists

Figure 6: Spotify user control and freedom

Figure 6 shows an example of how designers incorporated H3 into Spotify’s usability in the
Playlist creation feature. It gives total freedom to users to delete and add songs that they want
and the same thing for the playlist as well.

Spotify has a much more direct and clean way of informing users about how to control the web-
based application.

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Consistency and standards(H4): Faradina et., al (2022) narrated “The system becomes
standard and consistent in terms of writing sentences, fonts, and so on so that users do not need
to be confused by different situations and actions on the system” This means the consistency of
the color, fonts, and style should be similar for users to identify the brand and product image.

Image 1

Image 2

Figure 7: Consistency and standards of YouTube and Spotify

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Figure 7 shows the consistency and standards of YouTube and Spotify and how they have kept
the fonts and writing style the same for the users to recognize their actions regarding playlist
creation. Image 1 shows YouTube’s fonts, color and writing style, and how it is similar
everywhere. Image 2 shows how Spotify used similar fonts and styles everywhere with the same
color shades as well to inform the user of actions and consistency. For example, the play button
is green so is the song which means by pressing the play button the song will start playing.

YouTube and Spotify both have effective consistency and standards regarding the usability
design of playlist creation.

Error Prevention(H5):

H5 heuristics are the validations that prevent users from inputting the wrong command, incorrect
actions by suggestions, and the user presented with easy-to-read formatting for information
(Hamid et., al, 2020).

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 Image 1

Image 2

Figure 8: Error prevention of YouTube Music and Spotify

Image 1 displays how You Tube is not able to prevent errors in terms of putting songs in the
wrong playlist. There could be a small dialogue box pop-up for the confirmation of the action.
The same is for the playlist deleting process whereas in image 2 it shows, Spotify gives a pop-up
error preventing or confirmation message that the user actually wants to delete the playlist or not.

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Flexibility and efficiency of use (H6): According to Sari et al., (2020) Flexibility and efficiency
of use is a menu that fasters the interactions.

Image 1

Image 2

Figure 9: Flexibility and effectiveness of YouTube Music and Spotify

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In figure 9, Image 1 displays the keyboard shortcuts to YouTube Music which identifies the H6.
Image 2 displays the keyboard shortcuts to Spotify which identifies the H6. This clarifies that
YouTube Music and Spotify both are flexible and effective in terms of faster usability.

3.1 Comparison of YouTube Music and Spotify with a conclusion to the usability
report:

The author will compare YouTube and Spotify with data and tabular analysis.

Heuristics Weight Spotify YouTube

Visibility of system 10 10 8
status (H1)
Match between 10 9 8.5
system and the real
world (H2)
User control and 10 10 10
freedom (H3)
Consistency and 10 10 10
standards (H4)
Error prevention (H5) 10 9.5 8
Flexibility and 10 10 10
efficiency of use (H6)
Overall Average 10 9.75 9.08
Figure 10: Weight Table

The weight table in figure 10 clearly indicates Spotify has a higher overall average compared to
YouTube Music.

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The following chart will provide visual understanding of the weight comparison of YouTube
Music and Spotify:

Weight Bar of Spotify and YouTube Music

YouTube Music Spotify

Flexibility and effeciency of use (H6)

Error prevention (H5)

Consistency and standards (H4)

User control and freedom (H3)

Match between system and the real world (H2)

Visibility of system (H1)

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Figure 11: Weight Bar of Spotify and YouTube Music

The observation of the usability report in terms of comparing YouTube Music’s and Spotify’s
usability report focusing on Playlist creation is that YouTube has profound issues regarding H1,
H2, and H5. Spotify however maintained a good score in all the heuristic evaluations. However,
both music streaming services meet standard usability design which makes people use them so
frequently globally.

3.2 Key guidelines to incorporate into the mid-fidelity prototype:

After observing the YouTube Music and Spotify from their usability perspective there are some
key guidelines which should be incorporated into the mid-fidelity prototype that the author will
develop. The author should keep attention to visibility of system status in the mid fidelity

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prototype which YouTube Music had issues with. The consistency should be there with the fonts,
colors and the writing style as well as there should be focus on the error prevention heuristic. The
idea of the above evaluation is to understand the design issues in regard to the heuristic
guidelines of the two famous music streaming services and incorporate accuracy to mitigate
design issue in the mid-fidelity prototype.

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Section 4: User Persona:

A persona transforms abstract numerical information into a relatable human being

(Cooper,1999). According to Salminen et al.,(2020), in the case of data-driven personas, which
are made-up characters that represent the primary users or clients of a software system.
Typically, a persona profile will include the name, a picture, and a description of the persona’s
views and habits. The user personas chosen will be fictional. However, if end users only see the
persona without any explanations, they can still view data-driven personas as being
untrustworthy because they are unsure of how the information in the persona profiles was
derived (Chapman et al., 2006). This is the reason the author will keep some key factors in mind
for instance, the data to support those fictional personas will be based on statistical research on
Spotify and YouTube Music. User personas will reflect the diversity and inclusivity of the target
audience to ensure the product is accessible to everyone. The factors will consider age, gender,
ethnicity, and cultural background. User personas would concentrate on their needs and
objectives which will make it more likely that the product will satisfy the users’ needs and offer
a great user experience. The target audience of the music streaming service will be mostly people
under the age of 35. The user groups are teenagers and millennials who are aged 16 to 35.
Salminen et al., (2020) states that how the data was created needs to describe in the persona
profile with explanations to make it reliable.

Spotify has over 100 million users who collectively listen to millions of songs more than 70
billion times during the first twenty-eight days of July 2019 (Anderson et al., (2020). According
to the forecasting by Nadia (2022) the users of Spotify will reach 98.8 million users in the United
States of America only. Spotify has 365 million users and 165 million subscribers. According to
Gitnux (2023), 37% users of YouTube Music subscribers in the United States are aged between
25 to 34. The user base of YouTube music has grown by 60% from 2019 to 2020. Relating to
that 50% of the users of Spotify are millennials (Nadia, 2022). This research indicates that music
streaming services are a popular application among the young generation compared to people
aged over 35. These statistics justify the reason for choosing user personas under the age of 35.

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Persona one:

Figure 12: User Persona 1

Justification: The aforementioned persona in the figure 12 focused on customers who are
knowledgeable, experienced with the music industry and the grammar of the music as they are
music students. They are also expert in using music streaming services as they are always
studying music, hence they are experienced with music playlist feature, and technology
enthusiast. The statistical research of Spotify and YouTube Music is the proof of people their age
using these services frequently. Due to these facts, they would have the same experience with the
mid-fidelity prototype if it adhered to establish design patterns, trends, and conventions. Hence, a
similar design approach will be used to fulfil their expectations.

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Persona Two:

This persona is on people who are not a frequent user of music streaming services.

Figure 13: User Persona 2

Justification: The aforementioned persona 2 focuses on personnels who are less familiar with
music streaming services and its features like playlists and sharing playlists in groups. They just
listen to music for a certain purpose and for a time being not using the music streaming service
frequently in the 24 hours perimeter. The new design would be simple to use which would guide
new users like this to navigate their way around the musical features like playlist creation and
sharing easily.

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Section 5: Scenarios:

Dong et al., (2019) said, “ Scenarios refers to certain tasks and actions occurring in a certain time
and space.” The scenarios below will be interaction centered conceptual information model for
representing key features such as playlist creation and sharing of the user experience design of
the mid-fidelity prototype that will affect the target users of the service (Dong et al.,2019).

Figure 14: Two Concrete Scenarios

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Rationale of the scenarios:

The authors explanation of the rationale behind scenario 1 is that music students are passionate
about music and always listening and studying the music and so for them these music streaming
services should be seamless to use and offer them a variety of options that will satisfy their
needs. The authors explanation of the rationale behind scenario 2 is that people who do require
music listening all the time but for specific period of time music is like high priority to them, so
in order for them to understand the operations with ease in those moments are highly required for
user experience design.

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Section 6: Prototype Design:

The functional requirements for this mid-fidelity prototype would be to focus on the playlist
creation and sharing of the playlists. The standard that it should meet and focus on because of
time constraint and word count, would be visibility of system status, consistency and standards
and error prevention. The name of the mid-fidelity prototype would be Mixify.

Figure 15: Mixify design pattern

The design pattern follows regular music streaming services design pattern where there is vibe of
music, youth and energy expressed as this will be mostly used by people aged under 35.

The theme of the music player is a bit funky with a very funky name “MIXIFY”. The colors used
here is Orange and Black because they are pleasant and warm. The reason for using such bright
colors and funky name is to make it look modern and likable to young community and the
targeted audience of the age 16 to 35.

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6.1 Evaluation:

Visibility of system status:

Figure 16: Mixify's visibility of system status

Mixify has kept in accord that the visibility of system status regarding to playlist creation should
be informing customers of what is going on in the website.

Consistency and standards:

Mixify has kept proper consistency and standards of music streaming platforms regarding to its
font, writing style and color combinations which makes it easier for the users to familiarize with
other music streaming services.

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Error Prevention:

Figure 17: Error prevention aspect of Mixify

Whenever user would want to delete the playlist Mixify would give them a pop message like in
figure 17 that if they are sure of deleting the playlist or not. This is how the user will prevent
from deleting the wrong playlist.

The interface was designed to allow different types of users, for example, new users, old users,
less frequent users, to use the interface easily without any difficulty to navigate.

6.2 Screenshots of the mid-fidelity prototype:

Figure 18: Interactions of the mid-fidelity prototype

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Figure 19: Songs list for Playlist

Figure 20: Playlist sharing option

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Section 7: Conclusion:

The mid-fidelity prototype was created with the aid of usability testing, evaluation and
comparison of two of the most popular music streaming services. The author was able to
understand the depth of the heuristic evaluation while accessing designs critically. The
understanding of trying to provide satisfying user experience to the users in a structured and
standard manner was another take-away from this report. Neilson’s heuristic concepts are one of
the best evaluation criteria out there to provide the best user experience possible to the
consumers.

However, due to time constraints, the author’s creativity and analytical elaborateness was
limited. The time to understand and develop a professional mid-fidelity prototype was not
enough, hence the prototype was developed mostly to justify authors statements regarding to
usability design.

Further improvement could be made to the design of the mid-fidelity prototype which would
address more usability issues and portray the solutions in the design of those usability issues. The
author’s ability to think deep about the design of the music streaming services would also help
him understand other products usability issues and analyze them critically to suggest
improvements.

Overall the two music services are very much perfectly in accordance with the heuristics
guidelines in terms of usability and design. There are slight improvements that can be made in
both services which are constantly being researched and done by their respective UX design
teams.

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Reference:

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