Mixtape

A music discovery app designed to reduce decision fatigue and make discovery feel more personal. Built as a bootcamp capstone, I treated it as a real-world challenge, iterating on feedback from a spectrum of music listeners to balance user delight with practical constraints.

Smartphone screen showing a discovery section with categories like Zen, Workout, and Movies, with images of water, gym equipment, and movie posters.

Role

UX Designer, Research, Usability Testing

Type

UX Capstone Project

Timeline

16 weeks, 2024

Tools

Figma, Zoom, Pen & Paper

The Problem

Music has never been more abundant and accessible, but that's part of the issue. Listeners aren't struggling to find music. They're struggling to choose. Mixtape started with a simple question: what would music discovery look like if it felt personal, low-friction, and delightful?

Research + Discovery

I interviewed five music listeners from diverse backgrounds to understand how the problem actually showed up in their lives. I went in with assumptions. Research quickly challenged most of them.

Text reading '5 User Interviews' and 'Active + casual listeners' with an icon of two people.

Text on a beige background that reads '5 HMW Questions Narrowed to 3', with a question mark icon.

Color-coded sticky notes in a digital collaborative board organized into sections including Themes, Activities & Environment, Specific Interests & Motivations, Moods & Feelings, and Others, each containing various notes with different text.

Text indicating two people developed: Mary, a music lover, and Craig, a casual listener.

Text reading '2 Personas Mary + Craig' on a beige background.

Diagram showing affinity mapping, synthesized in FigJam

Text that reads '5 User Interviews' with a subtitle 'Active and casual listener groups across diverse backgrounds' on a beige background.

Affinity map from five interviews, grouped into four themes: decision fatigue, social experience, human curation, and context and mood.

Who I Designed For

Persona: Music Lover Mary, 28, engineer in Oakland. Wants human-curated, mood-based discovery and is frustrated by repetitive radio and limited search.

Persona: Casual Listener Craig, 36, sales rep in Austin. Wants discovery with context and word-of-mouth picks, and is short on time with too much choice.

What I Heard

Decision Fatigue

“It has been easier with more human-curated platforms to discover music. I like what this person plays, I trust their taste, and I can always dive into what they offer.”

— Research, Participant 3

Social Experience

“There’s an interior experience of music, and then there’s a more external group experience.”

— Research, Participant 1

Human Curation

“There’s not much of a challenge to find music anymore. It’s just a matter of what I’m going to put on.”

— Research, Participant 5

Context + Mood

“I like how music can transport you to different emotional mental states. Certain types of music can elevate my emotional state for that moment and enhance the activities I’m doing.”

— Research, Participant 2

Key Findings

Insight card: Human curation matters more than the algorithm. Users preferred recommendations from friends and trusted sources.

Insight card: Too much choice, too little direction. Users could find music but struggled to choose in the moment.

Insight card: Context matters as much as taste. What people want to hear depends on what they are doing, how they feel, and who they are with.

Text on beige background that reads 'Context matters as much as taste' with an icon of headphones and a paragraph about the importance of context in taste and listening.

Text on a beige background that reads '5 HMW Questions. Narrowed to 3 that directly informed the core design directions' with a question mark icon

Slide with the title 'Affinity Mapping' and the subtitle 'Synthesized findings into themes using FigJam'.

Screenshot of a webpage with a beige background and black text. The title says 'Human curation is more important than the algorithm.' The subtitle discusses user preferences for recommendations from friends or trusted sources over algorithmically generated ones, even if the algorithm is accurate.

A webpage with a beige background and black text titled "Too much choice, too little direction." The text discusses users' difficulty in choosing music during low-attention or activity-specific situations.

Design Process

I kept early sketches simple and focused. The goal was clarity over polish, understanding how inputs made during onboarding would ripple into core experiences like sharing music or reviewing recommendations.

From Sketches to Wireframes

Guerrilla testing taught me quickly that simplicity was the priority. The more cluttered the screen, the more overwhelmed users felt. Working in lo-fi also made it easier to catch missing states early before investing in prototyping.

Three Decisions That Shaped the Experience

Design decision card: Mood and activity-based discovery over genre filters, to reduce decision fatigue.

Design decision card: Social recommendations alongside AI, pairing human warmth with AI-assisted scale.

Slide titled 'Clarifying RIYL for new users' with a subtitle explaining a contextual modal overlay about the acronym on first encounter for music-native language.

Section header titled "Mood and activity-based discovery over genre filters" on a light green background.

Design decision card: Clarifying RIYL for new users with a contextual modal on first encounter.

Screenshot of a presentation slide titled 'Social recommendations alongside AI' with a section numbered 2, discussing user preference for human recommendations over algorithms.

Usability Testing

I ran two rounds of moderated usability testing, five participants each, conducted with a mix of remote and in-person sessions. The goal was not to validate what I had built but to find where it broke down and why.

Presentation slide titled 'Round 1 — What broke' with bullet points discussing confusion caused by acronyms, unclear icon purposes, user needs for more context, and unnatural sharing methods.

A presentation slide with the title 'Round 2 — What improved' and bullet points explaining aspects such as overall experience feeling clean and intuitive, onboarding appreciated for speed and directness, contact syncing addressed privacy concerns, and SSO sign-in preferred for convenience.

What Participants Said

Navigation

“There are not a lot of options in a good way. It just directs you to pick the thing and directs you there easily.”

— Round 2, Participant 9

Sharing

“There’s an indication the music was sent, so that means my friend knows I’m thinking about them.”

— Round 1, Participant 4

Discovery

“The registration process was really simple and to the point. There wasn’t too much noise. The recommendation process was also really quick — other apps take too much time to curate your For You page and I just give up.”

— Round 2, Participant 8

Delight

“The way it is all laid out is like butter.”

— Round 2, Participant 10

The Design

Mixtape brings together three core experiences: a mood and activity-based discovery feed, a social recommendations layer powered by people you trust, and an AI recommendations section that works quietly in the background.

Onboarding Flow

Screenshot of a mobile messaging app showing a message being sent to '@Rheya' with the text 'This song made me think of you -- I hope you like it! 🎶'

Tapping Albums displays your recommended albums.

Mobile app screen with options to connect a music service: Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music. There is a 'Continue' button and an option to 'Do this later'.

Start by tapping Sign up to create a Mixtape account.

Mobile app screen with a message to connect with people who use Mixtape, including a graphic of three people, a 'Continue' button, and an option to 'Do this later'.

View available music services to connect to Mixtape.

Read request to sync contacts, then tap Continue.

Sharing Music Discoveries

Review Share Music controller, plus options to share outside the app.

Mobile app screen showing a music playlist with three albums: 'American Broadcast', 'Hanging Sade', and 'A New...' with options to copy, share, remove from favorites, or delete each.

From Discovery to Listening

Mobile app screen for creating an account with options to continue with email, Google, Facebook, or Apple.

A smartphone screen displaying a music service selection menu with options for Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, with Spotify currently selected, and buttons for Continue and Do this later.

Mobile app screen for creating an account with fields for first name, last name, email, and password, and a 'Continue' button at the bottom.

Mobile app screen for creating an account showing fields for first name, last name, email, and password with accept/checkmarks next to each field, and a 'Continue' button at the bottom.

Screenshot of a music app displayed on a mobile phone, showing the 'RIYL' section with album covers for 'La Planète Sauvage' and 'Amber', a search bar, and a navigation menu at the bottom.

Screen showing a message that a music service has been successfully connected, with a cassette tape icon and a 'Continue' button.

Screen shot of a music streaming app showing a playlist with five songs titled 'Cccant You See,' 'Computer World 2,' 'World on a String,' 'Eye Contact,' and 'Les professionnels.' The app has sections for searching, albums, and artists. At the bottom, there are tabs labeled 'RIYL,' 'Discover,' and 'Settings.' The artist for 'Eden' is Talk Talk, and the playlist is currently playing.

First-time users see a contextual modal overlay explaining RIYL before engaging with the feed.

Tap Continue with email to begin the account creation process.

View the requested info to create an account.

Read success message then tap Continue.

Select Spotify then tap Continue.

Review suggested users to follow then tap Follow all.

Enter a friend’s username and write something nice, then tap Send.

Tap Artists and the grid view icon to view your recommended artists,

Connections confirmed.
The experience begins.

From your profile, view your saved songs and tap the ellipsis icon to start sharing.

After tapping Okay or the dismiss icon, tap AI Recommendations.

Enter the requested info for account creation then tap Continue.

Tap Share via the contextual menu.

Find your recommended songs, segmented controls, and a grid or list view toggle.

Mobile app screen showing AI music artist recommendations with photos and names, including Legowelt, OPN, Chromatics, Laraaji, Julie Byrne, Ovlov, Eden, and others, with a music control bar at the bottom.

View success toast message.

Reflection + Next Steps

This project taught me that the most valuable research findings are often the ones that surprise you. I went in assuming music discovery was the core problem. Users told me otherwise. That early correction shaped everything that followed.