Pandora For You

Design Handoff in 2021

 

PROBLEM

Having recently joined forces with SiriusXM, Pandora Product and Design embarked on a journey to create a combined discovery experience that brought to users the best of both Pandora and SiriusXM content.

A couple problems I aimed to solve were how might we deliver local, timely content to meet listeners in their daily routines and how might we empower discovery seekers to control, create, and personalize their experience in this all new experience?

The goal of this new experience was to present fresh, unique recommendations for each user based on individual listening history and behaviors. I worked very closely with Science, Content, Product, and Engineering to make sure the designs I presented were not only intuitive to users, but that the recommendations themselves could also be populated as a user expected on the backend.

ROLE

I was the Lead Designer who worked end to end (discovery, user research, concept ideation, interaction design, prototyping, visual design, user testing, iteration) on this experience across iOS, Android, and Web platforms.

TEAM

This project came to life over the span of over a year. I worked with several PMs: Tracey Mulrooney, David Greenstein, Tom Padula, and Amol Kandalgaonkar. Molly Feit was our UX Writer, Mohammed Sordo our Science Lead, and Wayne Christopher our Engineering Lead.

 
 
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THE SOLUTION

In the new experience, we presented users with a finite set of personalized recommendations to eliminate the cognitive overload and decision paralysis (Hick’s law) that existed in the previous Pandora For You experience (proven through insights gathered by our User Research team). By limiting the number of recommendations presented, we were hoping to decrease friction to get to the right content, the key success metric we had defined for this experience. Through the usage of transparent language (“Because you…”), we added another layer of personalization and indicated why we were recommending certain content to users.


 
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This For You experience serves a new set of recommendations daily. Whether a user is newly registered, or has a long listening history, For You recommends personalized content.

For newly registered and lapsed users, content is initially recommended based on others’ taste profiles who fall into in the same demographic. Once a user has developed a robust listening history, recommendations are based on the existing listener profile, as well as new implicit and explicit signals the user continues to give us.

 
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The card component on For You was carefully designed to prioritize speed to the right content, our success metric for the experience.

 
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The new For You page had to serve recommendations of all content types to accommodate the Pandora and SiriusXM catalog. Thus, I had to design several cards with various, but streamlined actions where applicable.

 
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FOR YOU ACROSS PLATFORMS

I also designed the new For You experience on tablet and Web, and worked closely with other designers to ensure the experience translated over to 10ft and other CE experiences.

 
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OUTCOME SUMMARY

This product is in beta testing, and will be available to the general population later this year.

 

LESSONS LEARNT

This was the largest design project I’ve ever undertaken thus far. Going from an idea that lived in the collective brains of a few individuals to a tangible feature that is live and in the hands of many for beta testing feels pretty awesome.

The list of things I learned is endless, but here are my top 4:

  1. Design has to work in tandem with content, engineering, science, and business priorities, making it harder but even more necessary to prioritize the user.

  2. Such large endeavors require adapting to a constantly evolving process with changing requirements, PMs, and priorities. About halfway through the project, we went through a huge reprioritization of content and features by other stakeholders, which was difficult initially, but we eventually overcame it.

  3. Understanding the technology and science behind recommendations and personalization is daunting but necessary to design a good user experience. Looping in scientists and engineers early can only help!

  4. Working remotely (especially through earlier stages of the design process) is difficult but possible. Aside from the first 3 months of this project, all efforts to make this For You experience come alive were performed remotely - everything from design critiques to user testing to QA was done remotely.


I’d like to thank my amazing design team who supported me throughout the entire way - we’re small, but mighty.


 
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