Frank Cadle Close project
06Product design · Learning · PersonalizationConcept development
Spotify · Independent concept

Learn the features.
Shape the music.

Helping listeners discover what Spotify can do—and express what they want to hear through five favorite tracks and a clear set of choices.

Role
Independent UX/UI concept
Focus
Feature learning + FAVFIVE curation
Starting point
Mobile listening experience
Stage
Hypotheses and interaction sketches

Personal observation

Useful features can be easy to miss.

I discovered swipe shortcuts for queueing and saving songs through use rather than a clear introduction. That experience raised a design question: how could Spotify help listeners learn useful actions while they are doing the task?

I also wanted to describe a listening session through several favorite songs, then shape its tempo, genres, familiarity, and length. These observations are the starting point for research; they do not establish how frequently other listeners encounter the same friction.

01 / Learn

Make new features usable.

A persistent “?” hub introduces features, offers quick practice, shows eligible beta experiences, and lets the listener choose interface complexity.

02 / Create

Start with your FAVFIVE.

Five favorite tracks anchor a mix. Visible choices let the listener prioritize BPM, related genres, familiar favorites, or new discoveries.

Current product context

Build on the tools listeners already have.

Spotify Radio starts from an artist, album, or song. Prompted Playlist already supports requests and rules. Running Mode includes controls for tempo, genre, familiarity, and duration. Blend is a social playlist that combines different listeners’ tastes.

FAVFIVE explores a visible five-track starting point and a structured way to explain preferences. The learning hub explores whether those tools and shortcuts can become easier to find, understand, and practice.

The proposed one-hour Free and two-hour Premium limits are product hypotheses for this concept. They are not Spotify’s current playlist limits.

Product context reviewed October 1, 2026. Availability varies by plan, platform, and market.

FAVFIVE / Working concept

Five favorites. A new direction.

A one-hour mix shaped by Frank’s five songs. Choose a direction, then explore the first three matches.

Frank’s listening session

Familiar feeling. Fresh selections.

1H target
View the five starting tracks
  1. Back on 74 — Jungle
  2. Lost — Frank Ocean
  3. Thoughts From a Balcony — Mac Miller
  4. Superstar — Lupe Fiasco
  5. Love Yourz — J. Cole

Click to view more songs
    How the matching works

    Match the five seeds’ editorial genre and mood tags, favor handpicked deeper cuts, and limit repeats to three songs per artist. Emphasizing a pool increases its weight; the mix keeps all three pools represented and adds full tracks up to one hour.

    Track titles and lengths come from artist catalogs. The tags and deeper-cut choices are editorial judgments, not measured popularity. This small catalog does not check listening history, analyze audio, play songs, or create a Spotify playlist.

    Catalog sources: Loyle Carner, Noname, Cleo Sol, Yazmin Lacey, Parcels, SAULT.

    Explore the learning hub and detailed controls
    Independent concept

    Your music

    Frank’s FAVFIVE

    1. Back on 74 — Jungle
    2. Lost — Frank Ocean
    3. Thoughts From a Balcony — Mac Miller
    4. Superstar — Lupe Fiasco
    5. Love Yourz — J. Cole

    1 hour · Hip hop + R&B + Jungle’s sound
    Lesser-known selections · No fixed BPM

    Opt in for this sketch, then edit the sample. You can turn it off through “?”.

    Design decisions to test

    Clear defaults.
    More control when needed.

    01

    Teach in context

    The “?” entry stays top-right. Brief contextual cues can point out a new action, while lessons remain dismissible and available to revisit.

    02

    Respect familiarity

    Simple, Standard, and Advanced change guidance and visible tuning. Listeners can switch levels without losing their choices.

    03

    Explain the mix

    Five seeds anchor the request. Tempo, genres, and discovery express intent. When preferences conflict, explain which priority shaped the result.

    04

    Make experiments optional

    A beta hub provides eligibility, an explanation of what changes, explicit opt-in, and a clear way to return to the familiar experience.

    Validation plan

    Can listeners learn it
    and make it their own?

    Compare a contextual lesson with discovery alone: can someone find, perform, and later repeat the queue or save action? Then ask listeners to build a five-song brief for a specific session and explain the effect of each control.

    Measure task completion, time to first useful action, recall of the shortcut, and confidence in the mix settings. Interview listeners about whether five required songs help express their taste or create unnecessary work.

    Independent passion project by Frank Cadle. Not commissioned by or affiliated with Spotify. The observations, interface sketches, and plan limits are proposals; user research and measured outcomes have not yet been completed.

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