Shazam - Mobile Application
Shazam is used to quickly identify songs, but the experience starts and ends there. While users rely on the app to identify music in the moment, there is little to no support for revisiting those moments.
Duration: 2.5 weeks
Team: Tussanee Limthaveemongkol, Izaac Seymour, Vivian San, Vernesha Jones, and Tamara Grant
Role: UX Designer - I owned the prototyping phase end-to-end: translating our team's ideas into interactive flows, making design decisions in real time, and using the prototype as a tool to pressure-test our thinking before we got too attached to any one direction.
This project explores how Shazam could evolve from a transactional tool into a more human experience to support deep discovery without changing its core purpose
The Gap
Users lack a meaningful way to revisit when & why they Shazam’d a song
There is no human-to-human discovery, despite music being deeply social
Users identify songs, but don’t always form lasting connections with them. Songs are saved, but the moment behind them is lost
We talked to people who use Shazam often and listened to how it actually fits into their lives.
We focused on:
When do people reach for Shazam?
What do they do after a song is found?
What does that moment mean to them emotionally?
“I usually find the song I am looking for on Shazam, then listen to it on Spotify”
“Sometimes I can’t remember the song I’m looking for, but I remember where I heard the song from”
“I find most of my favorite songs when I’m chilling with my friends and they play it for me”
How Do People Discover Music In Real Life?
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People don’t just remember a song, they remember where they heard it - in a car ride, a cafe, a moment with someone. Music and places are often tied together emotionally
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Other streaming apps that rely heavily on algorithms can feel like an echo chamber. People shared that some of the best discoveries happen more naturally through other people
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Having a space where there is a history of listens feels more like a list than a collection of memories
Music discovery is usually tied to people, places, and memories
Takeaways:
Let’s not fix what’s not broken
Shazam does not need to become another streaming app like Apple Music or Spotify. Its strength is capturing the moment of discovery.
Looking at How Other Apps Handle Connection
To understand how music discovery could feel more human, we looked at how other apps help people connect, not just with content but with each other.
I led the competitive analysis for the team, identifying the patterns across Spotify, Depop, and Instagram that became the foundation for our design direction.
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Spotify Blend shows how music can become a shared experience by combining two people’s tastes into one space. By doing so, it encourages curiosity and connection.
This helped us think: Shazam can let music come from people, not just recommendations
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Depop makes discovery feel natural by letting users ‘like’ items and explore profiles. It mirrors how people discover unique items in real life, through others with similar taste.
We saw a parallel in how music could be discovered the same way: by following people, not feeds.
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Instagram profiles set a strong expectation for what a profile should include: a quick sense of who someone is.
This helped guide what a music profile should show without overcomplicating things
Looking at these apps reinforced one idea-
people enjoy discovering things through other people.
Exploring Ideas
Our team sketched ideas together and aligned on the strongest direction. From there, I took the lead, translating those concepts into interactive screens in Figma, making decisions about flow, hierarchy, and interaction patterns as I built. Prototyping early helped me spot problems before they became precious, and gave the team something concrete to react to instead of talking in the abstract.
That north star guided every prototype decision I made: add only what makes the moment more meaningful, nothing that makes Shazam something it isn't.
How I Shaped the Experience
After building the initial prototype, I ran it through feedback sessions and iterated based on what I heard.
People responded most to the location tagging - it was the moment where the prototype clicked for them, where a song stopped feeling like a saved file and started feeling like a memory.
That feedback confirmed the direction and shaped the final flow. By the end, song history felt less like a list and more like a personal collection.
Discovery felt less lonely.
Music felt shared in a way that mirrors how it actually happens in real life.
Here's what those decisions looked like in practice
Giving the songs context
People can add a tag like “Corner Store,” “Airport,” or “Cafe”, and get even more specific by tagging the name of the actual place.
The song stays the same, but now it carries a moment with it
Letting music be discovered through people
Lightweight profiles help people discover music through others - the same way it happens in real life, without it turning into another social feed.
Testing confirmed the direction was right. The prototype did what we hoped. It made music feel like a memory, not a file.
What This Taught Me
Prototyping is where I do my clearest thinking. Building the flows myself, rather than just handing off wireframes, meant I caught interaction problems early, had more grounded conversations with my teammates, and could make decisions with confidence because I'd already stress-tested them in the prototype. This project taught me that prototyping isn't just a deliverable. It's a thinking tool.