Twitch-feature

Song Request

New Twitch Song request feature for expanding fans and creators to additional streaming content categories and interaction beyond gaming.

Role: Product Designer, Researcher, Animator

Tools: Sketch, Figma, Principle, Adobe Creative Suite

Duration: 2-3 Months, 2020

Conducted: User Interviews and Testing, User Flow, Journey Mapping, Wireframes and Prototyping.

Overview

Twitch is an online streaming platform that has been designed primarily for avid gaming fans, players and creators. In this project I worked on a solution for expanding engagement for new as well as existing audience and creators towards additional categories beyond gaming. Utilizing a deep understanding of the core product, current design guidelines and conducting user research helped me come up with the following solution.

This project was done in a product design class and not affiliated with Twitch.

Challenge

How can Twitch expand to other categories and attract more viewers and creators as well as existing ones, besides gaming?

Opportunity

Introducing a song request feature for the Music category content to increase attention, user engagement and interaction on music live streams and creators.

Research

Process

The process and approach for this project

Other Categories

Currently Twitch has many other categories besides gaming such as IRL, Art, Just chatting, Music and many more. You can see more users using it for sharing recipes, tutorials and other performances and uses. In fact, Just chatting category reached 7 million more hours of viewers watching than the League of Legends (gaming), in total of 81 Million hours watched on December 209 according to Stream Elements.

Why Music?

It seems like Twitch is already interested in the Music category as a streaming platform.

Music is especially in main navigation bar compared to other categories

Twitch developed a whole new free music tool called Sountrack (Beta) for creators.

More and more new and common artists are finding it hard reconnecting and performing to fans physically these days.

Rise in viewers and creators of the Music category on Twitch according to statistics.

According to twitchtracker.com there is a rise in live viewers per month for the music category overtime

Understanding Twitch as a Product

Business model and dynamic - To generate ideas for twitch expanding to other categories it was important to understand the relationship between Twitch, creators and the audience. Understanding the business model and what is the give and take helped spark ideas and increase understanding of the user dynamic and app features.

Gamification - Twitch is heavily built and reliant on plugging in gamification elements between users and creators, let alone between creators and Twitch. Increasing engagement by badges, stickers, tiers of subscribers, cheer bits and unlocking steps and paths for social influence drives users to want to get more access and be apart of communities and creators. Creators too need to follow a path to achieve more and more privileges and eventually gain revenue.

Song Request New Feature

Introducing a song request feature for the Music category content to increase attention, user engagement and interaction on music streams.

Before and After

Introducing a song request feature for the Music category content to increase attention, user engagement and interaction on music streams. Adding a music note to send songs via chat, directly for users to 'bid' and vote for queuing.

HOW IT WORKS

Mobile Prototype

Like, Add, Queue

User Testing and Wireframes

Process and User Interview Testing

I presented three ideas for a potential feature for more exposure and engagement for the Music category to 2 viewers and 2 creators that use Twitch.

During the ideation process I was testing key screens:

Left to right:
One is requesting songs to be played by a music creator through modal/pop up screen.
The second approach users can request songs to be played in a toggle on the chat.

Thirdly, a similar idea was creating a collaborative playlist regardless of a streamer playing the requested songs. The songs are played live and users can suggest next songs. These are lo-mid fidelity wireframes of the song request presented idea and a mid-hi fidelity sketch:

Key Learnings:
- 100% preferred the song request idea rather than the collaborative playlist feature
- 100% appreciated the "liking"/ "bidding" on songs to get them into a queue for control purposes
- 100% preferred the new feature attached to the chat as a toggle
- 50% disliked creating a new gamification currency/points that is purely related to Music.
- 25% valued additional interactions such as 'play song again' and more

Journey Mapping

Feature User Journey

To fully understand the flow I put myself in the user's shoes and mapped out the process of suggesting a song and having it liked and added tot he queue. There is a certain time that creators can allow for song requests so it's not occurring all the time. Users can like songs being suggested and view them on lists.

Design Iterations

Feature Scalability Improvements

While designing and journey mapping it occurred that there might need to be improvements since new problems were needed to be addressed in relation to the feature.

Challenges:

Scalability - What happens if there are more than 400 viewers in the stream?

Threshold - How many songs would be queued if everyone liked all the songs suggested?

Opportunities:

Channel Points - for liking and suggesting new songs channel points will be reduced.

Time - Open song request time limit by creator and there will be a time limit for a song to be liked upon

Song Request

Expanding Engagement to Other Categories