Heuristic Usability Review for SoundCloud

SoundCloud is the world’s largest music and audio platform. It is where anyone can listen to or create music.

This heuristic usability review will be based on the LEMES usability principles.

LEMES — Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Error-Tolerance, and Satisfaction

SoundCloud’s Unique Selling Point

SoundCloud’s design encourages more underground releases. Unlike Apple Music or Spotify, there is no need for its music to go through checks and balances before being released.

This makes SoundCloud to have the most diverse & unique collection of audio content for users.

User Journey Mapping

User Journey Mapping (Creating A Playlist)

User Journey Mapping (Media Controls Navigation)

Learnability

Playlists & Albums Page

The app uses clear and descriptive titles.

Provides recognizable icons to act as starting points for the user.

However, there was no clear path to help the user with their actions (e.g. creating a playlist)

Efficiency

There are not enough navigation shortcuts.

For example, it takes too many steps to create a playlist, unlike Spotify’s one-step shortcut.

SoundCloud has multiple playlists suggested for each mood — from relaxing to chilling to partying, and so on. Even though having many suggested playlists for “moods” and “themes” are a good idea, too many of these can clutter up the homepage really fast.

On the other hand, Spotify has suggested playlists that are more relevant and catered to the user. For example, “Keep The Vibe Going” since I was previously listening to old time classics, “Jump Back In” for my top songs listened, “For Fans of Eminem”, “Recommended For Today”, “Recently Played”, and the list goes on.

As you can tell the suggested playlists for SoundCloud & Spotify are incredibly different. One one hand it is tailored & relevant, on the other hand it has a high variety which is good, but in this case has cluttered up the homepage unnecessarily.

The user would also have to scroll a long way down to find a mood playlist that he frequents.

Memorability

The app’s unique media controls are easy to learn and engages the user’s natural skills like tapping & swiping.

SoundCloud uses a natural user interface, or NUI, that is effectively invisible to the user. And of course, there are always advantages and disadvantages of using NUIs.

For example, traditional media controls look like this:

Instead, SoundCloud uses simple actions like tapping and swiping.

Error-Tolerance

The app does not penalize human errors as all actions can be reverted.

The app provides many ‘Return’ functions to ensure that a user can easily recover from an error.

Satisfaction

The app’s interface is pleasant, using minimal text and buttons.

The app interactions encourages you to use smooth & natural gestures like tapping and swiping to complete tasks.

Conclusion

The SoundCloud app integrates Natural User Interfaces like tapping & swiping to allow consumers to naturally adapt to their unique design. Makes use of common gestures allow the user feel natural interacting with the app. The app lacks of readily available commands. Thus, using handy shortcuts will allow the app to be more efficient. Using a minimalist design not only makes the app easy to use, but also gives a much more pleasant feel.

Proposed Solution

“The point of a heuristic usability review is to demonstrate research that will convince stakeholders your designs will solve the problems you’ve addressed.”

Based on this usability review, I have made a completed a working prototype using Axure RP.

I would like to note that the prototype’s audio and music videos feature are currently not working unlike previously, due to major changes made by Axure RP in the past year.