SPOTIFY: Usability, Accessibility & Ethics

Spotify occupies quite a considerable amount of time for my daily routine activities. Using it while brushing, taking a bath, and listening to rock songs while hitting the gym. I’m sure I’m not alone as many millennials have a habit of listening to music and doing daily chores.

I’ve been using Spotify for the past two years and I’m amazed by their constant urge to improve their product and making that happen eventually. In July 2019, they had an event on Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) in Sweden. The talk was titled Accessibility and Inclusive Design at Spotify and dealt with how the accessibility guild manages to scale its impact across the company, (A guild is a community of interest around a particular skill set, interest, or practice). The mission of the accessibility guild is to “provide Spotify with the knowledge and resources to create inclusive experiences for everyone.”

The specific goals within the guild are to:

● Increase knowledge of accessibility across the organization.

● Ensure Spotify’s product platforms are moving towards being more accessible.

● Form a concrete accessibility roadmap that makes Spotify

more inclusive for our users.

● Plan, prioritize, and implement improvements for both design and technical accessibility.

This shows that Spotify does try to work and think about accessibility for all its users along with adhering to usability principles and ethical business practices. Below I will list a couple of usability heuristics and examples of how Spotify implements these.

Learnability & Memorability:

Starting from the sign up, Spotify provides an easy-to-learn product. Similar to other apps, it allows for easy account creation either through a simple signup interface or directly through social media handles. It shows which fields to engage with and the content to input, following the Visibility and Affordances components.

Within the app specifically, the CTA’s are designed well, clearly visible to the user, and understandable. They did a wonderful job keeping the CTA’s colors consistent.

Satisfaction:

Well! Other than its amazing UI and intuitive features its business model (freemium model) also makes its users so gratified and reassured.

Personally, Spotify provides a service that has made my life easier. I have discovered so many genres and artists that now I have music for every mood.

Accessibility:

● Spotify has lots of great features such as crossfades(Allows you to crossfade between songs), has a lot of keyboard shortcuts for the desktop version to allow users to interact without clicking the app, private session, etc for music enthusiasts.

● As mentioned above they are concerned and working & innovating to provide a seamless experience for the people of the disabled community.