Work
The New Wavform Homepage
Users came to read reviews and quickly log their own. But the original homepage buried written reviews and listening history, forcing users to hunt through sections they didn't care about. We needed to flip the hierarchy and them the primary content.
Problems and Opportunities
Engagement Bottleneck
Only friends' activity was visible by default. Trending reviews existed but lived further down the page. Given the average user followed fewer than three people, they saw a fraction of available content.
Spotify Integration Was Hidden
The biggest differentiator, being able to connect right to your Spotify and have your listening history or currently listening to on display, required going back to the homepage to leave a rating/review without manually searching. The average song lasts 3m 30s, meaning users have no time to dig for where to rate.
Research
90% of sessions started by checking friends' ratings, not rating independently.
Users rated 5X more through feed interactions (long-press) than deliberate navigation.
When we showed current listening data, engagement jumped, but placement mattered more than anything else.
Solutions
Now Playing in Nav Bar
Nested current listening directly into the navigation bar. No matter which screen you're on, one tap gets you to the review screen for what's playing. Leverages the Spotify integration without requiring a homepage detour.
Listening History to a Sheet
Songs users listened to in the past wasn't utilized as frequently. I chose to put it under the "+" log button. So when users went to leave a rating their history was shown by default.
Reviews as Vertical Feed
Flipped the content hierarchy entirely by making reviews the primary, scrollable experience like Twitter or Instagram.
Ratings as Top Carousel
Moved ratings to a horizontal scroll at the very top. Fast scan element for users who want to quickly glance at what's been rated, but no longer the primary focus.
Everyone Tab
Split the feed into two columns: Following (friends only) and Everyone (trending/public content). This solved the content wall problem, users following little to no one now had access to trending reviews as a fallback instead of hitting a dead feed.
Results
2.4x overall engagement per user
Decreased load time from 7.2s to 2.3s
