Motti®

The Problem with Pandora Stations

While most station types on our platform have long-standing guidelines for artwork, song and artist station types default to the image provided by the creator, with no additional design treatment - despite artist stations accounting for over 70% of station listening time.

In multiple moderated user testing sessions, participants expressed confusion around the lack of dedicated artwork denoting these stations, and those who were not already familiar with the platform often failed to correctly identify an artist or song station.

Why Product Design?

At Pandora, station artwork has historically been created and managed by the Brand & Marketing team. Our team approached theirs after identifying the confusion in users, and it was agreed that a number of factors meant that this project was right for the product design team to drive.

There are a theoretical infinite number of artist & song stations — therefore the design needs to be deeply integrated with the product backend and accommodate any image that already exists in our library.

We were concurrently working on a new Station Builder feature for Pandora, where users can select multiple artists to generate custom stations based on their choices. This would require an additional layer of generative design, where content from multiple artists comes together in artwork for every station created.

Cross-Functional Stakeholders

This project involved collaboration with numerous teams across the company

Marketing

Created and owns the artwork production for other station types

Engineering

Colour picker knowledge share, backend setup for artwork generation

Programming

Station curation, algorithmic content

Research

Moderated in-situ testing

Product Mgmt

Scope & Planning

Design Process

Competitive Analysis

The Problem with Pandora Stations

While most station types on our platform have long-standing guidelines for artwork, song and artist station types default to the image provided by the creator, with no additional design treatment - despite artist stations accounting for over 70% of station listening time.

In multiple moderated user testing sessions, participants expressed confusion around the lack of dedicated artwork denoting these stations, and those who were not already familiar with the platform often failed to correctly identify an artist or song station.

Why Product Design?

At Pandora, station artwork has historically been created and managed by the Brand & Marketing team. Our team approached theirs after identifying the confusion in users, and it was agreed that a number of factors meant that this project was right for the product design team to drive.

There are a theoretical infinite number of artist & song stations — therefore the design needs to be deeply integrated with the product backend and accommodate any image that already exists in our library.

We were concurrently working on a new Station Builder feature for Pandora, where users can select multiple artists to generate custom stations based on their choices. This would require an additional layer of generative design, where content from multiple artists comes together in artwork for every station created.

Cross-Functional Stakeholders

This project involved collaboration with numerous teams across the company

Marketing

Created and owns the artwork production for other station types

Engineering

Colour picker knowledge share, backend setup for artwork generation

Programming

Station curation, algorithmic content

Research

Moderated in-situ testing

Product Mgmt

Scope & Planning

Design Process

Competitive Analysis

The Problem with Pandora Stations

While most station types on our platform have long-standing guidelines for artwork, song and artist station types default to the image provided by the creator, with no additional design treatment - despite artist stations accounting for over 70% of station listening time.

In multiple moderated user testing sessions, participants expressed confusion around the lack of dedicated artwork denoting these stations, and those who were not already familiar with the platform often failed to correctly identify an artist or song station.

Why Product Design?

At Pandora, station artwork has historically been created and managed by the Brand & Marketing team. Our team approached theirs after identifying the confusion in users, and it was agreed that a number of factors meant that this project was right for the product design team to drive.

There are a theoretical infinite number of artist & song stations — therefore the design needs to be deeply integrated with the product backend and accommodate any image that already exists in our library.

We were concurrently working on a new Station Builder feature for Pandora, where users can select multiple artists to generate custom stations based on their choices. This would require an additional layer of generative design, where content from multiple artists comes together in artwork for every station created.

Cross-Functional Stakeholders

This project involved collaboration with numerous teams across the company

Marketing

Created and owns the artwork production for other station types

Engineering

Colour picker knowledge share, backend setup for artwork generation

Programming

Station curation, algorithmic content

Research

Moderated in-situ testing

Product Mgmt

Scope & Planning

Design Process

Competitive Analysis