Introducing Spotify’s New Design Principles

Last 12 months, a gaggle of us acquired collectively to dig into a difficult query: As Spotify continues to develop, how can we keep a excessive degree of design high quality within the experiences we create? 

After some analysis, we recognized a key alternative: To bump up high quality, we’d like clear, helpful design rules. Why rules? For one, we felt that we could not assist groups assess in the event that they had been designing in “the Spotify means” until we outlined what the Spotify means even is—we wanted some steerage. We additionally wished to assist designers converse the identical language when discussing design objectives and offering critique. An up to date set of rules might provide a few of this alignment. 

Where we began

Spotify’s authentic design rules had been from 2013, and on the time they did rather a lot to assist form a collective voice throughout design within the group. Spotify is a Swedish-based firm grounded in music; our earlier rules mirrored this. (Note the very Swedish idea of lagom!)

Now, in 2020, Spotify has modified fairly a bit. We’ve grown into an audio first firm and doubled down on podcasts; we create merchandise for listeners, artists, and advertisers; and we went from a handful of designers to virtually 200. 

Looking on the current rules, we requested ourselves: Do they nonetheless really feel true to all the issues we design? Are designers at Spotify even conscious of them? The reply was…no. 

We recognized three drawback areas: 

In brief, the previous rules wanted a refresh. 

Crafting new design rules  

Last 12 months, the members of our working group—a couple of dozen product designers and UX writers—acquired collectively to deal with this in a collaborative workshop. The intention was to get contributions from everybody within the group, as an alternative of getting one individual articulate “this is what Spotify design should be.” 

We used three guiding inquiries to hold us targeted: 

1. Why are we creating these design rules?

2. Who are they for?

3. How will they be used?

After some energetic debate, we agreed that rules function a framework to create and consider work—they will help product designers make design choices, and provides us a shared language for design critiques. The actual problem was defining what the new rules must be. What sort of values and design attributes ought to we aspire to when designing? What ought to the product really feel like? 

All the concepts went into a large matrix, and we dot-voted to assist us slim down. Based on this, we got here up with a draft of the brand new rules, shared it with our design management crew, and did some fine-tuning. 

And voilà! Our new set of Spotify design rules had been born.

Let’s take a more in-depth look:

Relevant 

It’s about reflecting you as a person. 

Spotify is made for you—we would like it to really feel customized. To be related, we must be considerate about what we current, to whom, and in what context. In easier phrases, it’s related once we current the appropriate information on the proper time. The reverse worth is that we don’t need “one-size-fits-all” experiences.

Human

It’s about communication, expression, and human connection.

Yes, Spotify is rooted in expertise. But it’s all about folks. Sometimes we dial up the emotion, and generally we follow logic—similar to folks do. Spotify ought to really feel dynamic, like tradition itself. A option to see that is that human experiences are intuitive and conversational. It’s not human when issues are overly intelligent, technical, or overly practical. 

Unified

It’s about how our model manifests throughout our options and apps.

Everything we design seems to be and feels reassuringly Spotify. We intention for coherence throughout merchandise as a option to construct familiarity and belief. That’s why we observe our design system—we begin by reusing reasonably than reinventing. We need our experiences to reuse and adapt for consistency; no person must be reinventing the wheel. 

Rolling out the rules  

It’s one factor to simply write rules…it’s one other factor totally to get everybody on board. If we wished our new design rules to stay, we wanted a roll-out plan. Here’s how we went about it. 

• To begin, we did a trial run of a workshop with one design crew (sure, we love workshops). This allow us to spot any crimson flags, get a way of whether or not the rules are helpful, and undergo examples of fine (and not-so-good) execution within the context of actual work.

• Just a few months later, we adopted up with a sequence of workshops with all design groups throughout Spotify. This means, each designer might observe placing the rules in motion throughout a design critique.

Were these roll-out efforts an excessive amount of? Not sufficient? Based on what we’ve executed up to now, two issues stand out: 

The extra examples, the higher 

It’s straightforward to say that Spotify ought to really feel “human” and “relevant”, however what does that really appear like? The examples had been tremendous helpful, and we might have benefited from having much more. 

Don’t neglect the swag

Looking again, the rollout ought to have had extra swag, like posters, stickers, or different goodies. It takes time to internalize new concepts, and exterior reminders would have helped. In the absence of “official” swag, one designer made his personal wallpaper! It was successful.

Remote work has made it tough to arrange bodily swag, however we’ve began on concepts for posters and different enjoyable stuff, too.

The end result up to now 

Now that we’ve rolled out the rules, what’s modified? 

Increased consciousness 

The excellent news is that almost all designers at the moment are conscious that Spotify has design rules. A current survey (run by our fab design ops crew) signifies that sure, designers learn about Relevant, Human, and Unified, and that they contemplate these rules when designing. This suggests the brand new rules are extra relevant and simpler to recollect, in comparison with the six rules we had earlier than. 

A shared language for design critique

Designers are (generally) referring to the rules when reviewing work, however there’s room for enchancment on this entrance. It nonetheless takes some aware effort to check with the rules throughout critique, however over time we’re hoping it turns into extra second nature. We’ll proceed wanting into this as a part of ongoing efforts to enhance our design processes, instruments, and assets for designers.

— 

When we began this undertaking, our hunch was that in an effort to have helpful conversations about high quality, we wanted a shared understanding of what it meant to design “in the Spotify way.” So have our new rules impacted high quality? It’s too quickly to say. But we hope that “relevant, human, and unified” convey what we aspire to realize in our merchandise—and that these rules function fixed reminders to do higher. 

Special shout-out to all our Principal-level designers for contributing to this work, and to Marina Posniak, Heiko Winter, Shamik Ray, and Juli Sombat for this put up.