Goal
For my master thesis I wanted to understand why the party space brings so much joy to people and explore how this joy could be extended to interfaces when listening to music alone.
Context
Master Thesis with Spotify
Spring 2024
Starting Point
As a queer women, I often navigate spaces that are not welcoming for me or deigned with me in mind. It was in the nightlife of Berlin that I, for the first time, felt truly authentic and a joy that wasn't there before.
I wanted to explore what it is about (the best case of) partying that makes it such a special space for people to be able to let go of their worries and free themselves for the time.
🌎
🪩
Outcome
Through my research, I found out that what makes parties special is the connection we feel to other people through music which brings us joy.
Since this joy is already there in the space of the party itself, I saw a bigger opportunity to design for the listening alone experience. I created six concepts based on moments that people shared with me that try to elicit the joy through connection felt at parties and bring it into interfaces.
presence pulse
link people
song reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
music soulmates
dance floor
Presence Pulse
Presence Pulse lets you share the moment you are listening to a song with all the other people who are, at the same time, listening to the same song. You are connected world-wide and are able to send the other people a little signal with coloured dots.
Song Reactions
Song Reactions lets you share snapshots of your face while listening to music. These pictures will then be shown to friends, when they listen to the same song, and vice-versa. The reactions are tied to the moment of the song you took the picture.
Heartbeat Sync
Heartbeat Sync shows you the heartbeat of everyone is a shared listening session. The moment the heartbeats synchronise, you will be grouped together. A special moment happens when all of your hearts beat in the same rhythm.
Music Soulmates
Music Soulmates matches you with the one other person on the planet that has the most similar music taste to yours. Anytime they are online, you two are able to join in on each other’s listening.
Dance Floor
Dance Floor mimics the dance floor of a club in the interface. The newly created space lets people dance together while listening to music in a group session.
Approach
Understanding the space
I started my journey by diving into the party space. I wanted to take a closer look at where people find moments of joy in this space.
I looked into this topic, by utlising a triangular approach through interviews, observations and auto-ethnographic stories. The interviews were conducted with 10 different people, I observed one university party and for the auto-ethnographic stories, I looked at my past party experiences from a new lens.
Interviews
Observations
Autobiographic
Design Interventions
Partying is such a context-driven subject, that's why I also crafted some lo-fi design interventions to see how the audience and the DJ could communicate to each other, since my first intuition was that joy is found music selection.
Moments of Joy
Since the joy at parties was my main value that I wanted to design for. I wanted to learn more about where people feel joy, without any assumptions.
I created an open survey on Instagram and asked people for their favourite moments at parties.
connecting to other people through music
Changing Context
While looking at this value, I realised that the joy through connection was already there in the party space. The whole setup is tailored to connect people.
But, where it's no inherently social is the listening alone experience. Because I saw a bigger opportunity to design for joy through connection in that space, I switched context and came up with a new HWM question.
connecting to other people through music
party
listening alone
connecting to other people through music
party
connecting to other people through music
listening alone
Exploring in Interfaces
I looked again at the different moments of joy people shared with me through the survey & a couple of them caught my eye. I was able to see something behind those moments, a quality that was being expressed. So I translated the moments into the qualities and started to explore how I could design interfaces to showcase these qualities.
reacting to a song
->
“Looking at my friends at a good drop
& we both make THE face”
linking songs to places & people
->
“Hearing “our song” when I’m there with my friends”
syncing heartbeat
->
“Looking around & feeling part of the crowd 🥰”
presence while listening
->
“when the dance floor is buzzzzzing!!!”
music soulmates
->
“The moment when you completely vibe
with a stranger on the dance floor”
Scales for Joy through Connection
After creating all my prototypes, I took a second look at all of the concepts. Initially, I was building them one by one and each concept gave me a new perspective of what it means to design for joy and connection. In the end, I looked at them collectively and was able to read the following insides.
Friends
Strangers
link to people
reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
presence
music soulmates
dance floor
1:1
Group
music soulmates
link to people
reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
presence
dance floor
Sync
Async
reactions
🥰
link to people
heartbeat sync
presence
music soulmates
dance floor
A Moment of Reflection
Honestly, this project was a roller coaster. In the best way.
I started out by looking into the space of DJ-audience interaction. Since, I also DJ, I first thought that the main driver of joy was the song choice. I got stuck in this topic for such a long time, creating interfaces to lift the agency of the audience from a very product-y side. Which was interesting, but something was not quite right.
After, I uncovered more and more what my project was actually about, I found what I was truly after: the joy found in this space. From this moment on, I pivoted my whole focus and started looking into this which I am very happy about.
I also learned to appreciate prototyping again and the value of finding insights through building. For each concept, I build it first and then conducted a material talk to see where I could move from there.
Goal
For my master thesis I wanted to understand why the party space brings so much joy to people and explore how this joy could be extended to interfaces when listening to music alone.
Context
Master Thesis with Spotify
Spring 2024
Starting Point
As a queer women, I often navigate spaces that are not welcoming for me or deigned with me in mind. It was in the nightlife of Berlin that I, for the first time, felt truly authentic and a joy that wasn't there before.
I wanted to explore what it is about (the best case of) partying that makes it such a special space for people to be able to let go of their worries and free themselves for the time.
🌎
🪩
Outcome
Through my research, I found out that what makes parties special is the connection we feel to other people through music which brings us joy.
Since this joy is already there in the space of the party itself, I saw a bigger opportunity to design for the listening alone experience. I created six concepts based on moments that people shared with me that try to elicit the joy through connection felt at parties and bring it into interfaces.
presence pulse
link people
song reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
music soulmates
dance floor
Presence Pulse
Presence Pulse lets you share the moment you are listening to a song with all the other people who are, at the same time, listening to the same song. You are connected world-wide and are able to send the other people a little signal with coloured dots.
Song Reactions
Song Reactions lets you share snapshots of your face while listening to music. These pictures will then be shown to friends, when they listen to the same song, and vice-versa. The reactions are tied to the moment of the song you took the picture.
Heartbeat Sync
Heartbeat Sync shows you the heartbeat of everyone is a shared listening session. The moment the heartbeats synchronise, you will be grouped together. A special moment happens when all of your hearts beat in the same rhythm.
Music Soulmates
Music Soulmates matches you with the one other person on the planet that has the most similar music taste to yours. Anytime they are online, you two are able to join in on each other’s listening.
Dance Floor
Dance Floor mimics the dance floor of a club in the interface. The newly created space lets people dance together while listening to music in a group session.
Approach
Understanding the space
I started my journey by diving into the party space. I wanted to take a closer look at where people find moments of joy in this space.
I looked into this topic, by utlising a triangular approach through interviews, observations and auto-ethnographic stories. The interviews were conducted with 10 different people, I observed one university party and for the auto-ethnographic stories, I looked at my past party experiences from a new lens.
Interviews
Observations
Autobiographic
Design Interventions
Partying is such a context-driven subject, that's why I also crafted some lo-fi design interventions to see how the audience and the DJ could communicate to each other, since my first intuition was that joy is found music selection.
Moments of Joy
Since the joy at parties was my main value that I wanted to design for. I wanted to learn more about where people feel joy, without any assumptions.
I created an open survey on Instagram and asked people for their favourite moments at parties.
connecting to other people through music
Changing Context
While looking at this value, I realised that the joy through connection was already there in the party space. The whole setup is tailored to connect people.
But, where it's no inherently social is the listening alone experience. Because I saw a bigger opportunity to design for joy through connection in that space, I switched context and came up with a new HWM question.
connecting to other people through music
party
listening alone
connecting to other people through music
party
connecting to other people through music
listening alone
Exploring in Interfaces
I looked again at the different moments of joy people shared with me through the survey & a couple of them caught my eye. I was able to see something behind those moments, a quality that was being expressed. So I translated the moments into the qualities and started to explore how I could design interfaces to showcase these qualities.
reacting to a song
->
“Looking at my friends at a good drop
& we both make THE face”
linking songs to places & people
->
“Hearing “our song” when I’m there with my friends”
syncing heartbeat
->
“Looking around & feeling part of the crowd 🥰”
presence while listening
->
“when the dance floor is buzzzzzing!!!”
music soulmates
->
“The moment when you completely vibe
with a stranger on the dance floor”
Scales for Joy through Connection
After creating all my prototypes, I took a second look at all of the concepts. Initially, I was building them one by one and each concept gave me a new perspective of what it means to design for joy and connection. In the end, I looked at them collectively and was able to read the following insides.
Friends
Strangers
link to people
reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
presence
music soulmates
dance floor
1:1
Group
music soulmates
link to people
reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
presence
dance floor
Sync
Async
reactions
🥰
link to people
heartbeat sync
presence
music soulmates
dance floor
A Moment of Reflection
Honestly, this project was a roller coaster. In the best way.
I started out by looking into the space of DJ-audience interaction. Since, I also DJ, I first thought that the main driver of joy was the song choice. I got stuck in this topic for such a long time, creating interfaces to lift the agency of the audience from a very product-y side. Which was interesting, but something was not quite right.
After, I uncovered more and more what my project was actually about, I found what I was truly after: the joy found in this space. From this moment on, I pivoted my whole focus and started looking into this which I am very happy about.
I also learned to appreciate prototyping again and the value of finding insights through building. For each concept, I build it first and then conducted a material talk to see where I could move from there.
Goal
For my master thesis I wanted to understand why the party space brings so much joy to people and explore how this joy could be extended to interfaces when listening to music alone.
Context
Master Thesis with Spotify
Spring 2024
Starting Point
As a queer women, I often navigate spaces that are not welcoming for me or deigned with me in mind. It was in the nightlife of Berlin that I, for the first time, felt truly authentic and a joy that wasn't there before.
I wanted to explore what it is about (the best case of) partying that makes it such a special space for people to be able to let go of their worries and free themselves for the time.
🌎
🪩
Outcome
Through my research, I found out that what makes parties special is the connection we feel to other people through music which brings us joy.
Since this joy is already there in the space of the party itself, I saw a bigger opportunity to design for the listening alone experience. I created six concepts based on moments that people shared with me that try to elicit the joy through connection felt at parties and bring it into interfaces.
presence pulse
link people
song reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
music soulmates
dance floor
Presence Pulse
Presence Pulse lets you share the moment you are listening to a song with all the other people who are, at the same time, listening to the same song. You are connected world-wide and are able to send the other people a little signal with coloured dots.
Song Reactions
Song Reactions lets you share snapshots of your face while listening to music. These pictures will then be shown to friends, when they listen to the same song, and vice-versa. The reactions are tied to the moment of the song you took the picture.
Heartbeat Sync
Heartbeat Sync shows you the heartbeat of everyone is a shared listening session. The moment the heartbeats synchronise, you will be grouped together. A special moment happens when all of your hearts beat in the same rhythm.
Music Soulmates
Music Soulmates matches you with the one other person on the planet that has the most similar music taste to yours. Anytime they are online, you two are able to join in on each other’s listening.
Dance Floor
Dance Floor mimics the dance floor of a club in the interface. The newly created space lets people dance together while listening to music in a group session.
Approach
Understanding the space
I started my journey by diving into the party space. I wanted to take a closer look at where people find moments of joy in this space.
I looked into this topic, by utlising a triangular approach through interviews, observations and auto-ethnographic stories. The interviews were conducted with 10 different people, I observed one university party and for the auto-ethnographic stories, I looked at my past party experiences from a new lens.
Interviews
Observations
Autobiographic
Design Interventions
Partying is such a context-driven subject, that's why I also crafted some lo-fi design interventions to see how the audience and the DJ could communicate to each other, since my first intuition was that joy is found music selection.
Moments of Joy
Since the joy at parties was my main value that I wanted to design for. I wanted to learn more about where people feel joy, without any assumptions.
I created an open survey on Instagram and asked people for their favourite moments at parties.
connecting to other people through music
Changing Context
While looking at this value, I realised that the joy through connection was already there in the party space. The whole setup is tailored to connect people.
But, where it's no inherently social is the listening alone experience. Because I saw a bigger opportunity to design for joy through connection in that space, I switched context and came up with a new HWM question.
connecting to other people through music
party
listening alone
connecting to other people through music
party
connecting to other people through music
listening alone
Exploring in Interfaces
I looked again at the different moments of joy people shared with me through the survey & a couple of them caught my eye. I was able to see something behind those moments, a quality that was being expressed. So I translated the moments into the qualities and started to explore how I could design interfaces to showcase these qualities.
reacting to a song
->
“Looking at my friends at a good drop
& we both make THE face”
linking songs to places & people
->
“Hearing “our song” when I’m there with my friends”
syncing heartbeat
->
“Looking around & feeling part of the crowd 🥰”
presence while listening
->
“when the dance floor is buzzzzzing!!!”
music soulmates
->
“The moment when you completely vibe
with a stranger on the dance floor”
Scales for Joy through Connection
After creating all my prototypes, I took a second look at all of the concepts. Initially, I was building them one by one and each concept gave me a new perspective of what it means to design for joy and connection. In the end, I looked at them collectively and was able to read the following insides.
Friends
Strangers
link to people
reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
presence
music soulmates
dance floor
1:1
Group
music soulmates
link to people
reactions
🥰
heartbeat sync
presence
dance floor
Sync
Async
reactions
🥰
link to people
heartbeat sync
presence
music soulmates
dance floor
A Moment of Reflection
Honestly, this project was a roller coaster. In the best way.
I started out by looking into the space of DJ-audience interaction. Since, I also DJ, I first thought that the main driver of joy was the song choice. I got stuck in this topic for such a long time, creating interfaces to lift the agency of the audience from a very product-y side. Which was interesting, but something was not quite right.
After, I uncovered more and more what my project was actually about, I found what I was truly after: the joy found in this space. From this moment on, I pivoted my whole focus and started looking into this which I am very happy about.
I also learned to appreciate prototyping again and the value of finding insights through building. For each concept, I build it first and then conducted a material talk to see where I could move from there.