Amazon Music Capsules
Reimagining Music Streaming: Turning Moments Into Music Memories
A student design challenge in collaboration with Amazon Music.
Overview
Project Type
Group project - research, user interviews, UX/UI design
Timeline
February - March 2025
(One month)
Tools
Miro
Figma
Framing our Problem
Design Challenge: Amazon Music is seeking a Customer Experience (CX) strategy to improve retention across its tiered offerings. Create a differentiating product that engages users, keeps them active month-over-month, and makes Amazon Music indispensable in their daily lives.
Our Problem Statement: How might we make music streaming more enjoyable for users while fostering community interactions to keep them engaged?
Amazon Music Capsules
Just like a time capsule, Amazon Music Capsules captures listeners' monthly listening history. More than just a playlist, it’s a multi-media experience that allows you to track your favorite listening experiences, uncover new trends, interact with artists and share your capsule with friends.
Design Thinking Process
Double Diamond Method
Discover
Design
Define
*Deliver
Converge
Diverge
Converge
Diverge
*For the scope of this design project, proposals will be presented to Amazon Music but not delivered or implemented
Discover:
Section Title
Competitive Audit
Strengths of Competitors:
-
Diverse Music Discovery & Recommendations.
-
Intuitive User Interfaces.
-
Strong Social Features.
Weaknesses/Opportunities for Us:
-
Limited Cross-Platform Ecosystems
-
pre-curated playlists - a fixed way of streaming music.
Survey Data
-
3/12 survey respondents still use Amazon Music (vs those who no longer do)
-
7/12 used Amazon Music Prime (free with Amazon Prime) in the past
-
11/12 look for a visually appealing platform
Interview Findings
-
Theme 1: Listeners want it to be easy to find new music and recommendations
-
Theme 2: Users are interested in sharing their listening experiences and building community
-
Theme 3: Users wants suggestions tailored to their listening trends
Define:
User Problem Overview
Music is more than just listening; it’s tied to memories, emotions, and experiences. Simply streaming music on an app doesn’t capture all the other experiences of the user
1
2
3
4
Users feel stuck in repetitive recommendations.
Recommendations feel generic, missing personal context and moods.
There’s no meaningful way to engage with artists.
Music streaming feels like a solo experience, disconnected from friends & community.
User Persona
Problem Statement
How might we make music streaming more enjoyable for users while fostering community interactions to keep them engaged?
Introducing: Amazon Music Capsules
Just like a time capsule, Amazon Capsule captures your monthly listening history. It’s more than just a playlist, it’s a multi-media experience that allows you to track your favorite listening experiences, uncover new trends, interact with artists and share your capsule with friends.
User Flow
Design:
Wireframes
High Fidelity Prototypes
Amazon Music Capsules - Four Features
Feature 1: My Capsules Collection
En-”capsule”-ate your monthly listening
experiences!
Capture & relive your favorite songs, audiobooks, and podcasts that shaped different moments in your life.
Share & compare your musical timeline with friends.
A perfect way to share your music tastes, spark conversations, and discover new music together.
Feature 2: Friends' Capsules
Feature 3: Capsules Near You
Set capsule settings from private to public and see what others are listening to around you.
Feature 4: Exclusive Drops from Artists
Interact with your favorite artists and get latest updates and trends from their favorite artists.
Engagement promotes retention and locked content encourages upgrading user plans.
Reflections
What Went Well:
Our design concept creatively and appropriately addresses expressed user needs surrounding personalization, community and recommendations. Additionally, we also address business needs for user retention and plan upgrades.
What to Improve:
Next steps for this project would be to conduct user testing to ensure if any user considerations were missed in our design. Such concepts to learn more about includes the onboarding process for the concept of capsules and ensuring users comprehend the new concept well enough.
Future:
Future iterations on this design could incorporate further personalization and user-to-user interaction. For example, users in the future may be able to create or edit Amazon-generated capsules to make it even more of their own. Users can also be encouraged to further collaborate on Amazon Music to share their capsules with one on a forum-like space.