English
Project contribution
User interface/experience design
Publish date
June 2025
Category
Music
Notes and acknowledgments
I have no commercial purposes related to or arising from this work. Album covers, Apple's design components, and brand names like Billboard were used solely to support the visual presentation of the project. The project occurred between February and June and was based entirely on the Apple Music iOS app (v18.3). Thanks to Ali and Cansu for their suggestions during the design process.
The transformation of music listening habits
A study conducted by IFPI (2023), involving over 43.000 participants, reports that people listen to music through various mediums, including television and radio. Music streaming apps, which constitute 32% of the distribution, are preferred for ad-free content, access to any song at any time, and a vast library of millions of albums.
Listening motivations beyond numeric data
As music gradually becomes involved in everyday life, understanding listening habits often requires more than sole quantitative data. For instance, a frequently played track is not always a sign of preference. Sometimes, it is played repeatedly in the background while studying, or it is a child's favorite song played repeatedly by a parent. In some cases, users may also define their other activities by looking at how long they have listened to music for. Users who often listen to music while working might realize how much time they have spent at the office by evaluating their listening duration (Wirfs-Brock et al., 2020).
User feedback on Apple Music
Apple Music users often comment that the editor-curated playlists, along with large-scale album cards, make it harder to access music. On platforms such as the App Store, Reddit, and Ekşi Sözlük (an online platform in Türkiye for user opinions and/or discussions), many users indicate that the app has slowly started to feel like a maze as they keep using it.
It is also notable that user feedback on square cards with sides around 200 pixels, which reduce the number of albums visible on screen, doesn't point to an issue specific to Apple Music. For instance, some users also demanded a more compact layout for the app during a study on YouTube Music (Choi et al., 2023). Limited screen space has led to various complaints across many apps.
User pain points
Information architecture
In Apple Music, overlap in certain tab names and functions can occasionally hinder navigation across the app.
Personalized experience
Rather than directing users straight to the previously preferred content, Apple Music often highlights editor-curated playlists. This can reduce the sense of personalization and is likely to increase users' cognitive load (see also Sweller et al., 1998).
Content layout and hierarchy
The sheer number of album cards on the layout complicates navigation for many users. The size of the cards also limits the amount of content that fits in the viewport and makes music discovery more difficult.
User personas
I identified four user personas through the user reviews collected and the empirical studies examined. The advantages and disadvantages of working with secondary data are open to discussion, but these personas substantially helped me adopt a more inclusive approach throughout the design process.
2
User interface
Following the research stage, I designed a refined user interface to improve the navigation experience in Apple Music. High-fidelity design and prototyping stages of the redesign process are shown below.
Tools and resources
Adobe Firefly helped me generate profile portraits for the project's user personas.
Adobe Photoshop and mockup templates helped me generate all static device visuals for the project.
Apple (and Apple Music) logo and status bar components were only used to support a realistic presentation of the project.
ChatGPT was used for placeholder text, proofreading in both Turkish and English, and genre- or era-specific music suggestions.
C
Choi, A., Shin, E., Joung, H., & Lee, J. (2023). Towards a new interface for music listening: A user experience study on YouTube.
Figma was extensively used throughout both the low- and high-fidelity design stages, along with the prototyping process of the project.
Google Fonts provided Roboto, which I chose for the project as an open-source alternative to Apple's SF Pro.
IFPI. (2023). Engaging with music 2023. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Rotato was used extensively to showcase the designed user interface through device videos. I did not rely on any other software or tools for these video demonstrations.
S
Sweller, J., van Merrienboer, J.J.G., & Paas, F.G.W.C. (1998). Cognitive architecture and instructional design. Educational Psychology Review, 10, 251–296.
Unsplash provided the most of the visual materials used throughout the project, excluding album covers and user profile portraits, which were sourced separately.
W
Wirfs-Brock, J., Mennicken, S., & Thom, J. (2020). Giving voice to silent data: Designing with personal music listening history. In CHI '20 (pp. 1–11). ACM.
Project owner
Görkem Çolak