My Friends Hate SoundCloud iOS So I Redesigned It for Them

As a full-stack developer and avid music lover, I‘ve been a longtime fan of SoundCloud. The platform has introduced me to countless emerging artists over the years and helped me connect with fellow fans who share my passion for music.

However, when I talk to my friends about using SoundCloud, I often hear a recurring theme of frustration with the current iOS app. Common complaints include:

• Lack of personalization and limited music discovery features
• Overwhelming, cluttered interface with too much emphasis on the social feed
• No easy way to organize saved music into playlists
• Dated visual design that feels out of step with other modern apps

Curious to dig deeper into these issues, I decided to undertake a passion project to research, redesign and prototype a new iOS experience for SoundCloud. As an experienced developer, my goal was not only to improve the core user experience but also to consider technical feasibility and identify opportunities to boost engagement and retention.

Understanding the Current SoundCloud iOS App

To kick off the project, I first wanted to understand the current state of the SoundCloud iOS app and how it compares to competitors in the market. Some quick research on App Annie revealed that SoundCloud currently ranks #6 in the Music category on the App Store, with a 4.2 star rating across 5.4M user reviews.

While a 4.2 rating may seem decent, reviews analysis shows common themes around poor design, lack of features and general bugginess. Here‘s a snapshot from Appbot of some recent 1-star reviews:

To assess the app with a critical eye, I conducted a heuristic evaluation against Nielsen‘s 10 usability heuristics. The evaluation surfaced 20+ usability issues, which I grouped and prioritized based on severity. The top issues related to:

• Lack of personalization and content relevance (Heuristic #7 – Flexibility and efficiency of use)
• Cluttered UI with competing priorities (Heuristic #8 – Aesthetic and minimalist design)
• Inconsistent navigation and confusing information architecture (Heuristic #4 – Consistency and standards)

User Research and Problem Definition

Equipped with a baseline understanding of the app, I next wanted to gather direct input from SoundCloud users to validate and expand on my initial findings. I started by conducting 45-60 min interviews with 12 participants who fit my primary user persona of avid music listeners aged 18-35.

The interviews focused on understanding participants‘ attitudes and behaviors around music discovery, curation and consumption. Key insights that emerged:

• Users rely heavily on algorithmic recommendations from platforms like Spotify and struggle to find new music on SoundCloud
• Many users don‘t actively engage with or derive value from the SoundCloud social feed due to low content relevance
• Users employ creative workarounds like spreadsheets and notes apps to keep track of music they like on SoundCloud
• There‘s a strong desire for more control over music organization and curation, e.g. through playlist creation

To gather input at scale, I also ran a survey with 200 SoundCloud users recruited through UserTesting. The survey validated many of the themes from my interviews:

Based on the research, I defined a core set of user needs to guide the redesign:

1. Personalized music discovery based on listening history and preferences
2. Streamlined access to saved tracks and content
3. Flexible options to curate and organize music
4. Intuitive navigation and information architecture
5. Clean, polished visual design that showcases content

Redesign Process and Solutions

Information Architecture and Navigation

To kick off the redesign, I took a close look at the app‘s existing information architecture using OptimalSort. Through a series of open and closed card sorting exercises, I worked to simplify the core navigation and organizing content into clear, intuitive categories.

One of the key changes was creating a new Discover section as a personalized home base for music discovery. This would replace the existing Search tab and feature dynamic modules like:

• Recommendations based on listening history
• Trending tracks and artists
• Context-aware suggestions, e.g. music for focusing, working out, etc.
• Curated collections from music experts

Here‘s a sample JSON response showcasing how the backend could power these recommendation modules:

{
  "modules": [
    {
      "type": "recommended_tracks",
      "title": "Based on your favorites",
      "tracks": [
        {
          "id": "123",
          "title": "Sunset Dream",
          "artist": "Chillhop Music",
          "artwork_url": "https://i.imgur.com/abc123.jpg",
          "audio_url": "https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/123/stream"
        },
        {
          "id": "456",
          "title": "Cruising",
          "artist": "Philanthrope",
          "artwork_url": "https://i.imgur.com/def456.jpg", 
          "audio_url": "https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/456/stream"
        },
        ...
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "trending",
      "title": "Trending in Electronic",
      "tracks": [...]
    },
    {
      "type": "context_aware",  
      "title": "Focus Flow",
      "tracks": [...]
    }
  ]
}

For saved content, I introduced a new Library tab housing all of a user‘s previously liked tracks, albums and playlists. This would make it easy to browse previously discovered music without the clutter of the social feed.

To enable playlist creation, I envisioned a simple flow where users could seamlessly add tracks to new or existing playlists throughout the app. Here‘s a quick prototype of how that interaction could work:

From a technical perspective, playlists would be stored as a new data model associated with user accounts. The key entities would include:

• Playlist: id, user_id, name, description, public (boolean), created_at
• PlaylistTrack: id, playlist_id, track_id

The API would need new endpoints to support CRUD actions for playlists, e.g:

• POST /playlists – create a new playlist
• GET /playlists – retrieve all playlists for a user
• POST /playlists/:id/tracks – add a track to a playlist
• DELETE /playlists/:id/tracks/:track_id – remove a track from a playlist

Visual Design and UI

With the core IA in place, I moved into exploring visual design directions. The goals were to modernize the look and feel, improve legibility and create a more immersive listening experience.

Some of the key changes included:

• Updating the color palette to be more vibrant and expressive
• Increasing the size and contrast of text for better readability
• Introducing bolder typography to establish a clear visual hierarchy
• Expanding use of album artwork and artist imagery to create visual interest
• Reducing clutter and increasing whitespace to focus attention

Before & After:

I used Sketch and InVision to translate the visual direction into high fidelity mockups and an interactive prototype.

Prototyping and User Testing

To validate the redesign direction, I conducted user testing with an InVision prototype. I recruited 6 participants via UserTesting and asked them to complete a series of tasks within the prototype while thinking aloud.

Tasks focused on key user flows like music discovery, playlist creation and content curation. Here‘s an example of the task flow for music discovery:

1. Imagine you‘re looking for new music to listen to on SoundCloud. Show me how you would go about discovering new tracks.
2. Browse through the different sections on the Discover page. Talk me through what you‘re seeing and how useful each section seems.
3. Select a song that catches your interest and add it to a new playlist.

To analyze the sessions, I reviewed the video recordings and summarized the key insights in a Rainbow Spreadsheet:

Overall, feedback was very positive, with users commenting on the improved organization and streamlined discovery experience. One user shared:

I love how the Discover page is personalized to my tastes. The recommendations are spot-on and I‘m already finding new artists I want to check out. It feels so much more relevant than the old SoundCloud.

Another user spoke to the benefits of the new Library section:

Having all my liked music in one place is a game-changer. No more digging through my activity feed to find that one track I saved weeks ago. The playlist feature is the cherry on top – it‘s so intuitive to create and add to playlists as I‘m browsing.

There were a few areas for improvement as well:

• Some users were unsure what would happen to existing followed artists with the new IA. I added an onboarding flow to clarify this.
• The playlist creation flow had some friction on mobile web. I simplified the flow to reduce the number of taps required.
• A few users wanted audio previews on hover. I added this to the roadmap for future exploration.

Results and Future Roadmap

While this redesign was done as a personal project, I believe it has the potential to significantly move the needle on key metrics for SoundCloud:

• Increasing user engagement and time spent in app by enabling better discovery and curation
• Improving retention by providing more reasons for users to return to the app and fostering long-term collection building
• Driving monetization by increasing opportunities for users to upgrade to SoundCloud Go+ for offline access to playlists

To measure the impact, I would track the following KPIs:

• Number of tracks saved per user per day/week (engagement)
• Number of playlists created per user (engagement, retention)
• Ratio of daily/weekly/monthly active users (engagement, retention)
• Avg. session duration (engagement)

Here‘s a rough mockup of a potential dashboard to track these metrics:

If I were to implement this redesign, I‘d prioritize these initiatives in the near-term:

• Building out the recommendations engine to power the Discover page
• Introducing playlist creation and incorporating it throughout the UX
• Overhauling the visual design and UI component library
• Updating the iOS app to consume the new endpoints and modules

Longer-term, there are many other exciting opportunities to enhance the SoundCloud iOS experience, like:

• Integrating with Siri and Apple Watch for hands-free listening
• Surround sound and spatial audio for immersive playback
• More social features to facilitate artist-fan interactions
• Gamification to incentivize creation and curation

The beauty of being a full-stack developer is that I can not only imagine these possibilities, but also start making them real. Hopefully, this redesign project serves as a conversation starter with the SoundCloud team on how we can make the platform more valuable and delightful for millions of music lovers around the world.