Aux

Collaborative Music App

UX Case Study

Aux aims to turn music listening into a shared experience by solving the problem of disconnected group listening. It allows users to listen in sync, add songs to a live queue, and vote on what plays next, giving everyone equal control and creating a more social, engaging way to enjoy music together, no matter where they are.

Winter 2025, Figma, Canva

The Problem

Music listening is often a solitary experience, even when friends or teammates want to enjoy music together from different locations. Current platforms make it difficult to listen in sync, collaboratively control the queue, or feel equally involved in music selection during group sessions. Users need a seamless way to create shared listening sessions and add songs to a live queue in real time so everyone can participate, influence the music, and feel connected regardless of physical distance.

Goals

  • Synchronizing playback among group members

  • Letting users collaboratively add, vote, and interact

  • Creating a shared social space around music

  • Making group control intuitive and accessible

Research

  • Music streaming’s global revenue currently sits at $17.5 billion

  • 78% of people listen to music via a streaming service

  • Over 600 million subscribe to a music streaming platform

COMPETITIVE ANalysis

Core Collab Features

Limitations

Opportunity Insights

Synchronized playback for a small group

Only for Premium users nearby (initially)

Your platform can offer location-independent sessions and voting

While many music apps excel at individual listening and discovery, few successfully create true shared listening experiences that feel social, real-time, and democratically controlled.

Synchronized listening via FaceTime

Tied to ecosystem; limited music interaction

Broader social features and cross-platform support needed

Co-view music videos in sync

Not playlist-driven; reaction features limited

Provide playlist collaboration + listening context

Interviews

To better understand how people experience group listening and what they desire in a collaborative music system, I conducted interviews with participants aged 20–25 from diverse backgrounds. Participants were asked open-ended questions about their music habits, social listening experiences, and pain points with existing apps. The goal was to uncover unmet needs, potential features, and opportunities to make shared music experiences more intuitive, fun, and socially engaging.


“For pregames in the locker room, it needs to be quick and simple, just a link to join and bang, we’re all listening and all adding to it.”
“I like discovering new music, but sharing it with friends should be effortless and fun.”
“Sometimes we want to listen together but are in different places. A way to sync our music remotely would be amazing.”
“I wish there was a way for everyone at the party to vote on what song comes next, so everyone gets their songs in there.”

Key Insights

  • Shared control enhances group enjoyment

  • The app must be easy to join and use

  • Social presence drives engagement

Personas

After conducting user interviews, two personas were created to represent Aux’s target users. These personas helped guide design decisions and refine a collaborative platform that stands out from existing solutions.

Journey Map

A journey map for my persona Jordan was created to illustrate how he would use Aux in a real-world scenario. It highlights his experience setting up a shared listening session and the challenges he encounters while coordinating music with his group.

DESIGN Concept

Aux is a collaborative music app that lets friends, teammates, and remote groups share and enjoy music in real time. With synchronized playback, shared queue control, voting, and interactive reactions, everyone can contribute equally and feel connected. Aux turns listening into a simple, fun, and social experience, whether together or apart.

WireFrames - Lo/Hi fidelity

Prototype

These prototype videos demonstrate how users create and join sessions in Aux, showcasing key features such as adding songs, voting on queued tracks, and reacting in real time. They also highlight the overall user interface, visual design, and flow of the app experience.

User Testing Notes

Takeaways

  • Users were able to create and join sessions quickly without confusion.

  • The shared queue and voting feature felt intuitive and encouraged group participation.

  • Adding songs was straightforward, though some users expected a clearer confirmation after adding.

  • Reactions helped make the experience feel more social and engaging.

  • Overall UI flow felt smooth, with users easily understanding where to go next.

  • Users appreciated the clean layout, but a few suggested slightly stronger visual hierarchy for key actions (vote, add, react).

This project reinforced the importance of designing for group dynamics and simplicity. Through research, personas, journey mapping, and prototyping, I learned that collaborative experiences must feel intuitive, fast, and inclusive to be successful. User testing showed that clear flows, real-time feedback, and social interactions like voting and reactions significantly improve engagement, guiding refinements to the Aux interface and overall experience.