Spot
Jan - Apr 2025 ✱ User Experience and Brand Identity
Overview
This user interface project transforms Spotify Kids, an outdated and inaccessible music platform, into a space designed specifically for tweens, ages 9 to 12, to explore their musical identities.
I created the brand identity and interface design for Spot backed by research on the massive developmental changes tweens experience – a fourth grader is much more different than a seventh grader!
Spotify Kids is restrained to a select curation of outdated songs, but Spot lets parents grant permission to what tweens want to explore.
Process
Federal laws like COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) withhold children’s information from going public online without parental consent. Platforms only allow users over 13 years old, so Spotify Kids is designed for those aged 0 to 12.
An app made for infants and seventh graders has a massive developmental span! Spot is supported by research on the ever-changing identities of tweens in particular, a time where they experience as much development as they do within birth and at two years old.
Interaction design guidelines for young people currently focus on preschool-aged children; tweens need recognition as they explore who they are. Spot, shortened from “Spotify,” is designed as a space (a literal spot) tweens can share with peers and family members.
Spotify Kids is restricted to its vertical orientation, and Spot leverages the iPad's horizontal orientation to make the space less cluttered.
Outcome
Spot raises awareness about how young people deserve opportunities to actively explore their identity through music.
In the end, I earned my Honors in the Discipline distinction through this project towards my BFA at Northeastern University. I also had the privilege of sharing my work at a poster presentation under Northeastern’s College of Arts, Media, and Design.
While students typically focus on one area of study through their project, my work was an interdisciplinary collaboration with an Associate Professor in communications studies. Exploring the intersections between design and communications ignited my passion for supporting my creative work with attentive research.
