Spotify music app is now available for Windows Phone 7.5. The interaction design team at the design consultancy Ergonomidesign, has been working together with Spotify in the design and development of the app. New features and an improved user experience define the new Spotify app.
The app has been developed specifically for the WP7 platform and differs in a number of ways from earlier Spotify apps. Early on, the Ergonomidesign team focused on adapting the app to be closer to the desktop version of Spotify. It was important to enhance the social dimension of Spotify, making it possible to browse through friends' profiles to see what they have been listening to and recommend. The functions People Page and Play Queue were identified as essential and integrated early on.
"One of the challenges in this project have been the request to design the interface and the functions to be strictly in line with Metro, the WP7 interface design language," explained Niklas Wolkert. "We've done a good job. The WP7.5 user will definitely feel at home while in the Spotify interface."
Ergonomidesign's interaction design team started working on the app early on in the project, during the autumn of 2010. Spotify turned to Ergonomidesign to take advantage of the teams' experience from designing Windows Phone 7 apps. Another challenge was to balance designing for a large number of functions and still maintaining the best possible user experience throughout the whole app. To meet the challenge, the team focused on well developed functions and utilizing Metro, the WP7 design language, that is so integral to the user experience.
"Metro is strict, but it provides opportunities for us as interaction designers," Wolkert added. "We have used it to improve the user experience of Spotify on the phone. An example is panoramic views and visual clues in the interface that leads the user to navigate through the page. Parts of another page show up in the margins of the current page view, which makes it easy to understand where to go next."