Apple Music for Athletes
Apple Music already has a great UI for displaying music, categorizing the playlists, and making the collaborative features easily accessible and maintainable. Building upon the app and making it more accessible to a broader audience (mainly for performance-based athletes) allows performance-based athletes to upload music, easily organize their playlists for their hobbies and jobs, and play their music to perform.
Apple Music (concept)
4 months
2025
UX Designer
At the ice skating rink, I work as a figure skating coach; I usually talk to the volunteers and coaches who upload the music and work at the skating table to help play the music for the skaters. Usually, I hear a lot of testimonials that got me to work on this concept of improving the quality and accessibility of the performance music:
Stretch Your Toes.
OPPORTUNITIES
Too Dependent
Music plays right away, which makes it difficult for skaters who are alone to play without any help. Internet connection is also a must for cloud-based apps, which makes the app buffer, creating difficulty in usage.
Unfriendly User Exp.
The upload process is difficult, from third-party apps to the "multi-accessed accounts," with authentications going back to the primary user to enable other users to log in to the same device (going from Google Drive to Cloudbeats using the same Google Gmail account to upload music into the same drive).
Limited Mobile Features
For Apple Music specifically, uploading music is enabled only by Macbook, which syncs up to iPhone/Apple Music for some time. The option to upload to a mobile device isn't available.
“It takes such a long time to start the music because it’s buffering from the wi-fi”
“I can’t log in to upload my skaters’ music onto the account. Can you do it for me?”
“I can play my music by myself if I fast-forward my music and put it on loop, but I’d rather just be able to start it from the beginning.”
“There are too many phones on the table to play music from,”
“I want to play the music without any issues or wi-fi buffers.”
“I want to be able to play my music myself whenever no one is around to help me so that I can focus on my improvements”
Challenge
Creating an update/feature heavily centered on performance-based athletes will make their skating journey more easily accessible and usable for performances. This will hopefully create an incentive to buy Apple products more cohesively (MacBook, iPhone, Apple Watch) for ease of access and functionality. Hopefully, this would be usable in other disciplines, such as competitive dance, cheer, gymnastics, etc.
Design Solutions
Accessibility
Develop quicker access to the account with a music playlist for involved coaches and athletes.
Independence
Make it easily usable for athletes practicing on their own to play their music and perform with speakers without the help of others.
Simplicity & Consistency
Create a reliable source for athletes to play music with minimal issues and problems for better flow.
GROWING PAINS
Since the direct competitors for this app were SkateLoops and CloudBeats, figuring out what they did well and what they needed improvement on was the primary goal of figuring out how to approach the changes for Apple Music for athletes.
To the Drawing Board.
I use Apple Music quite heavily as a figure skating coach as I regularly cut my skaters' music and upload it from my MacBook to sync up to my phone, so I can listen to the cuts on my drive to the rink to hear any glaring errors. It's pretty convenient for me to customize and create an album/playlist in that manner. Still, it's also helped me realize a lot of explorations that helped me flesh out this project to consider the usability of the app.
Since I was working with a preexisting app, the main component to tackle was adding to the app while making the features breathable. Considering the skaters', volunteers', and coaches' pain points, new features needed to be present for the athletes' usability. Navigating through the app also needed to feel easy and approachable for users of all ages since the athletes range from 3 to over 60 years old.
Pinpointed issues.
The upload feature wasn't distinctive enough for older users to know where it's at and what to do.
New features must be present for performing athletes’ usability, without dealing with pain points.
Categories were needed to help segment the music into smaller categories, separating potential playlist creations from the files' naming conventions.
Taking a step back and looking through the Apple Music app, the iOS brand, and the iPhone itself was the catalyst I needed to figure out how to represent the features for the iconography and user-friendly navigation and presentation of the added features.
Patching things up.
NEW CONNECTIONS
Newly, Added Features
Implementing the new features will help enhance the users' experience of using the app independently to play music.
(OLD) Song being played(OLD) Queued up songs
(New) Song being played with new features(New) songs being queued up(NEW) Selecting buffer time and voice-over option with 1x speed to play a skater’s program music.Music Speed
The music speed will help the athletes learn the choreography of the music with the slower options or challenge them to remember their piece of music quickly with faster options. The default position will always be 1x speed.
Playing music will have new features: speed, buffer time, and voice-over to help skaters independently play their music and help simulate a competition setting by the voice-over announcing their name and skating level.
Music’s Features
Buffer Time
This adds 5 to 45 seconds of silence before the music plays. This feature helps the athletes get into their start position before the music starts. A different countdown visual indicates how much time is left before the music begins.
Voice-Over
This voice generator will read out the title/name of the skaters' music. This feature will happen before the buffer time to replicate the competition style of announcing the athletes to the stage and the athletes taking their start position.
Addressing specific needs by giving users the options and ability to customize their music to play on the speakers, creating their own personalized and efficient experience.
Generate ease of user flow by eliminating unnecessary buffer time and creating an organized setting for queuing up music and announcing the next skaters in line.
(NEW) New Features on Apple Watch for music
(New) New Features on Home page of Apple Watch
(NEW) New Features on Lock Screen of iPhone, to quickly turn features on or offThe buffer time and voice-over feature will be added to the lock screen and Apple Watches in case they need to be turned on or off, respectively.
Apple Watches will have newly added features for performance athletes to utilize quickly with just a tap on their wrist. The iPhone attaches with an aux cord to play music over the rink's speakers, and then Apple Watch users can use the watch's features to control their device while on the ice.
Seamless Integration
Unlocks more options to use the app, while encouraging the Apple product line for seamless usage.
NEW CONNECTIONS
Initially, music could only be synced from the app if uploaded from the MacBook’s Apple Music or a third-party upload (Google Drive or Dropbox) for other cloud-based music apps with additional authentication. This created many pain points, user drop-off points, confusion, and unintentional buffer time for users involved.
Uploading…
(OLD) Uploading music from google drive for cloudbeats(OLD) Sign in to third-party app to sync up music to cloud-based app, cloudbeats
(OLD) playing music with features on cloudbeats
By implementing the upload feature in the mobile version of Apple Music, if the music is on your phone, it will direct your phone to your files app, where the music, among other downloads, will be stored. From there, music must be categorized and named for easier organizational access.
Uploading Music
(NEW) Uploading Skater's music from files app in iOS/iPhones
(NEW) Categorizing the music into the right playlist
(NEW) Uploading to completion for skater's music(NEW) Full walkthrough of uploading music into the appLimits issues for third-party traffic and problems for uploads by directly uploading on the app itself for simplicity and flow.
Develops immediate categorization of levels, disciplines, and types of music for users’ organizational flow.
For the other direct competitor, SkateLoops, although the upload feature is simple and direct and has the needed features to play music independently, other users cannot collaborate on a playlist for uploading music, queue settings for the next set of skaters, or the option for background music, all in the same app.
Seamless Integration
NEW CONNECTIONS
(OLD) playing music with features on Skateloops
(OLD) Limited categorization options for expansive set of skaters' music to be uploaded(OLD) Uploading music into SKateLoopsThis feature is already available on Apple Music, so it builds upon the existing feature. As long as users have the Apple Music app and can create an account, they can invite others to edit and collaborate with the open playlists, creating a seamless flow of uploading and categorizing music.
Collaborate Feature
(NEW) Inviting people to collaborate on the playlist for skaters' music
(NEW) visual for the collaborated songs uploaded for the shared playlist
(NEW) Collaborated song showcasing who upoloaded/shared the song(NEW) Sharing playlist for uploading skaters' music(NEW) a user showcasing their shared playlist for collaborated background music options for skatersEnables easier access for shared playlists among users of the app
Creates a point of access for users to get together to collaborate, with no additional authentication process needed
LOOKING AHEAD
Retrospective
HOW COULD THESE DESIGNS HAVE BEEN IMPROVED?
A more intuitive and enriched user interface would be created with more time, closely replicating Apple's motion and interactive design to establish the concept further.
Going on-site to gymnastics, cheer, and other performance-based competitions and practices to see if these features will be enough or if more issues become prevalent to fully understand and bring forth the attention performance-based athletes need with music.
Testimonials—Since this is closely aligned with my work and community, hearing the feedback, critiques, and off-handed comments about the music integration was conducive to my research and design explorations and user expectations for the app. Hearing these comments helped me realize how crucial in-person feedback is while experiencing the product on hand, since I can see, hear, and experience the pain points, successes, and questions I had about the product.
Project takeaways.
Personal to Broader Experience—This idea initially was to help solve the problems of figure skating with music. However, as I worked on adding the new features, I thought of other athletes who needed to perform with music and brought them to mind when creating this product. Some features added are not as crucial to the skating community (music speed). Still, I heard on videos and social media that they are essential for other athletes, like rhythmic gymnasts or competitive dancers.
Initially, one of the main ideas in this project was to create an original idea, potentially for the music problem. However, as the project scope changed and I was taking the Google UX Certification course, it went from making a new app to using a pre-existing one, Apple Music, and thus, the priorities changed.
Apple Music had a lot of features that would already fix the problem, and as previously mentioned, I use their app heavily as a figure skating coach. So, with their mission to focus on health and fitness, it led me to believe that this could be on their brand, so creating an Athlete-focused version of Apple Music became the sole goal for this project.
I explored these different pathways by combining all the pieces from off-handed comments about our current music system being used, finding problems and solutions from my daily life, and using other technologies and implementing them together. Being able to dig deep into my brain and compartmentalize different aspects of the creations of this project from a culmination of what I've used in my life and past experiences reaffirmed how important it is as a designer to keep exploring different things and keeping your eyes open to a variety of technologies and materials that help enrich or causes problems in your daily life. Thinking of why certain things are hard or easy to do can help resolve issues that may not have come to fruition.