Spotify Audiobooks: Adding a Social Layer

Role: Product Designer 
Challenge: Increase daily engagement with Spotify’s audiobook feature by introducing a social element. 

Status: Finished
Year: 2025
Scope: 48hrs

1. Discovery and Research

Business Goal:
The primary aim was to boost daily user engagement with Spotify Audiobooks through the implementation of a social feature.

Research Objective: To understand how users currently interact with audiobooks in social contexts, identifying key behaviors, preferences, and existing pain points. 

Methodology: A rapid research phase was conducted involving:

  • Analysis of discussions on platforms like Reddit (specifically r/audiobooks and r/books) to understand user interactions and desires.
     
  • Review of existing social reading platforms like dedicated audiobook book clubs and Amazon’s book clubs.  
     
  • Exploration of studies on audiobook listening habits.
     
     

Key Insights & Assumptions:

  • Desire for Deeper Engagement: Many listeners seek more than passive listening; they want discussions, recommendations, and shared experiences. 
     
  • Social Influence: Recommendations from trusted communities significantly influence audiobook choices. Discussing books enhances comprehension and retention.
     
  • Multitasking Behavior: Most users listen to audiobooks while engaged in other low-effort activities like commuting or exercising. 
     
  • Existing Social Gap: Online communities (Reddit, forums) are already popular for audiobook discussions, indicating a clear demand for social interaction that Spotify wasn’t meeting. 
     
  • Assumption: Humans naturally seek social connection, and this extends to media consumption like audiobooks.
     

2. Definition and Scope

User Personas: Based on research insights (and aided by AI generation for efficiency), three key personas were defined: 

  1. Emily (The Social Listener): Wants to discuss books within a community, finds current options fragmented across platforms, and seeks like-minded listeners. 
     
  2. Phil (The Multitasker): Listens while doing other things, desires quick, low-effort ways to react or share thoughts (like reactions, highlights) without lengthy discussions. 
     
  3. Sara (The Curious Explorer): Relies on peer/community recommendations over algorithms, enjoys trending discussions, and wants to feel part of a larger audiobook community.
 

 

Problem Statement: Listening to audiobooks on Spotify is currently an isolated experience, lacking the social interaction many users seek. Users resort to external platforms (Reddit, Discord, TikTok) for discussions and recommendations, representing a missed opportunity for Spotify to foster in-app engagement and community. The challenge is to integrate social features seamlessly without disrupting the core listening experience, thereby increasing engagement and building community. 

How Might We (HMW): How might we create a social experience around audiobooks on Spotify that helps listeners connect, share, and discuss stories without disrupting their listening experience? 

3. Ideation and Prioritization

Brainstorming: A timed ideation session was conducted, drawing inspiration from platforms like Reddit, Goodreads, Discord, and Audible. A wide range of ideas, from micro-interactions to larger social features, were generated.

Effort vs. Impact Mapping: Ideas were plotted on a 2×2 matrix to prioritize high-impact, low-effort solutions. 

  • High Impact, Low Effort: Social talks tab per audiobook, trending books feed, curated lists. 
     
  • High Impact, High Effort: Book clubs/forums, social discovery homepage section, listening parties. 
     
  • Low Impact, High Effort: Chapter reflections, shareable audio clips.
     
  • Low Impact, Low Effort: Chapter reactions. 
     

 

Prioritization & Final Decision:

  • High-effort ideas like full book clubs or listening parties were deemed too complex for the 48-hour timeframe. 
     
  • Features like chapter reflections were seen as potentially interruptive, and shareable clips didn’t align perfectly with the engagement goal. Lightweight reactions were low impact.  
  • Chosen Idea: “Social talks in audiobook page”. This involved adding a dedicated discussion tab within each audiobook’s page.
    • Rationale: It provides a meaningful social layer directly linked to the content, allows asynchronous discussion (like a built-in mini-book club), fosters community, seemed feasible within the time constraints, and offered potential for gathering user data for future iterations.  

 

Persona Alignment: The “Social talks” feature caters to:

  • Emily: Provides a space to see discussions, discover theories, and feel part of a community. 
     
  • Phil: Allows quick engagement by reading or posting comments during breaks without demanding lengthy interaction.  
     
  • Sara: Brings the familiar forum/discussion format she enjoys on other platforms directly into Spotify, facilitating discovery and community feeling. This feature encourages return visits to check comments or add thoughts, driving daily engagement. 
     

4. Design

Information Hierarchy & Feature: The core design change involved adding a new “Book talk” tab to the existing audiobook page navigation (alongside About, Chapters, etc.). This tab houses community comments and discussion threads related specifically to that audiobook. 

Wireframing: Initial ideas were sketched by hand to quickly explore layout and interaction flow before digital design. Sketching directly while referencing the Spotify app helped ground the design.  

High-Fidelity Design & Flow:

  • Final screens were designed to mimic Spotify’s existing UI patterns. Arial was used as a font fallback per Spotify’s guidelines. 
     
  • A screen flow was created to illustrate the user journey: navigating to the new “Book talk” tab, viewing comments, and potentially adding a comment. A full prototype was not feasible due to time limits. 
     

5. Personal Reflections

This 48-hour challenge demanded rapid prioritization and a focus on clarity over perfection. The initial research phase felt broad, but narrowing the scope was crucial for timely delivery. Using AI for summarizing research notes and generating persona outlines proved efficient, helping distill insights into relatable user profiles. Sketching directly from the app interface was a valuable technique for staying focused. While aiming for UI fidelity, compromises were made due to font availability and the decision to create a screen flow instead of a prototype under time pressure. It was an intense but enjoyable challenge that highlighted the importance of scope management and iterative design.

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