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Introduction

Melodic Flora on Amazon Music: transforming music into a social activity using games

Melodic Flora is an add-on game for Amazon Music transforming listening to music from a passive to an active social activity. Users can listen to music with friends to earn points and grow themed gardens with plant species that showcase their favorite genres.

 

My project was selected as a top 5 finalist for this design sprint with Amazon Music, with possibility for future integration.

Skills

End-to-end prototyping

Game Design

Ideation

Rapid UX Research

Design Systems

Outcome

A live interactive mobile game prototype expanding on Amazon Music’s listening experience, delivered in a presentation with Amazon Music clients.

Design sprint challenge

Design a product that leverages Amazon Music’s offerings with emerging technologies in 3-5 years.

Project overview

My approach

The design sprint

 

I was given three weeks, Amazon Music’s design system, mentorship with an Amazon Music designer, and the prompt above.

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I started the sprint with secondary research to determine the medium of my product, identify target customers and empathize with customer needs.

With this information, I proceeded to ideate designs, gather user feedback, and finalize an interactive prototype to present to Amazon Music clients.

Melodic Flora demo walkthrough

Key flow

Access your plant via the Amazon Music dashboard

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The player is welcomed with previews of friend activity with shortcuts to join group sessions and recommendations. The player can also access their plant in the navigation bar, where the plant grooves to their current song.

 

Informed by research

A common pain point from music platforms is their lack of engagement, music suggestions, and visibility of friend activity. Users normally skip songs and turn off their screen while listening to music.

Key flow

Group listening sessions with friends

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Players can invite friends to group listening sessions where they can share song recommendations. They see a shared plant garden with species representing different genres. The shared session shows lyrics and comments for the played songs.

Informed by research

To differentiate Amazon Music from competitors, it’s important to emphasize social connections. Participants from surveys felt a lack of social interactivity with friends due to busy schedules and bad texting habits.

Key flow

Grow musical plant gardens with friends

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When friends listen to music together, they can grow plant gardens and forests for other people to see. Each plant species represents different music genres and styles.

 

Informed by research

Participants felt isolated in their music interests and found it difficult to share recommendations. They also felt pressure to have others like their music and prefer sharing music in groups and indirectly rather than 1-on-1.

Key flow

Listen to music to earn points for plants and merchandise

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When players listen to music, they earn points that can be used to unlock and customize new plants for their garden depending on the music genre listened. Points can also be used to purchase official merchandise from their favorite artists.

Informed by research

Listening to music on popular platforms is a passive solo activity. Participants sometimes find it difficult to enjoy all the songs on their playlists without skipping or even discovering more songs from their favorite artists. A points-based system adds more engagement to listening to a variety of music, especially when different plants can be unlocked.

Takeaways and opportunities

There is an edge case where users can inactively play music in the background to earn points. However, I maximized Melodic Flora’s interactiveness by having plants move to music and displaying friend activity banners.

Given more time, I would’ve loved to incorporate a greater artist presence and interaction into Amazon Music. Rather than having plant gardens be only within friends, it would be fascinating to see collaborative gardens with artists and their fanbases.

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