Spotify IFE – Design Portfolio

Spotify For Airlines

Design Case-study

Role
Lead Project Designer

Deliveries
MVP • Design Vision • Dev Specs

Date & Status
2024-2025 • In Development

About Project

Spotify partnered with United Airlines to integrate direct streaming into seatback In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems, allowing passengers to seamlessly access their favorite content at 35,000 feet.

Business goals.

In partnership with United Airlines build and launch industry leading streaming solution for airline passengers. Capitalize on high-volume passenger traffic to accelerate new user acquisition and platform growth.

Research Into Users Mindset

Challenges

First of its kind

Since this was Spotifys first venture into Airlines, it was difficult to form any kind of base-line experience

Lacking data

There were no prior data around passenger expectations, mindsets, behaviors, and pain points

Target audience

We also lacked baseline data on primary target audiences and contextual use cases, requiring us to define user profiles from scratch

The Flying Mindset

To bridge this data gap, we conducted targeted user surveys to uncover passenger mindsets and expectations. Our research specifically investigated traveler demographics, behavioral motivations, and flight frequencies. Who flies, why, and how often?

Mapping Out User Journey

Challenges

Touch points

Early iterations of user-journeys & use-cases revealed that critical user touchpoints extended far beyond isolated IFE app engagement

Activation

How does user access or create their accounts was missing when we focused only on core app engagement

Awareness

Early iterations revealed low baseline awareness of the Spotify IFE app, which obscured the core value proposition and hindered discoverability

Holistic Journey Mapping

It became critical to include Awareness & Activation as part of the holistic journey, this helped us uncover high-impact product opportunities along with friction points that otherwise would have been missed.

Shaping Up Design Strategy

Challenges

New touch points

Integrating new touchpoints into the journey introduced unforeseen complexity to design and technical scope beyond the initial assessments

Design scope

We needed to capture product requirements and create design execution plan. Aligning scoping, deliverables, and dependencies against realistic timelines

Resourcing

Prioritized as a lean pilot initiative, the project was led by a core team of Product, Engineering, and Design leads rather than a fully resourced squad

Lean & Robust

Dual-track design strategy to balance partner constraints and development resources. Prioritize delivering a launch-ready MVP for immediate validation and testing, while establishing a "Design North Star" for the long-term product and design vision.

Building MVP For Internal Test

Challenges

Designing from scratch

Revised scope and timelines ruled out a ground-up build, forcing a pragmatic shift toward leveraging existing frameworks.

Frameworks

We had to evaluate several core framework options to establish a strong structural foundation for the IFE experience.

Usability criteria

Since we were building this experience for the first time, we needed to build some base-lines criteria’s for usability

Tablet framework

Our initial tech assessment suggested that since our tablet app and IFE screen dimensions are highly comparable and the IFE hardware ran on Android. We tested the solution by implementing some basic IFE functionality and running a prototype on an actual IFE device.

Usability Flags

Testing revealed major UX issues, three of these issues are highlighted below

D-pad incompatibility

While the tablet framework naturally accommodated touch interactions, severe usability issues emerged when evaluating the navigation for D-pad.

Legibility

Legibility varied significantly based on seating ergonomics: while effective for standard viewing distances, content became difficult to read on displays mounted farther away, highlighting an accessibility challenge across specific cabin configurations.

Layout optimization

The tablet app mirrored portrait mobile layouts and lacked optimization for landscape, which was the mandatory default view for IFE. This at times created UI irregularities.

Audit

I initiated an audit across our existing core apps to identify scalable design patterns viable for IFE.

TV as Baseline Framework

Benefits

Remote first

TV was naturally a remote first experience which solved d-pad issue significantly. Navigating the UI became much more intuitive.

Made for distance

TV app was designed for distant viewing, which meant components were optimized for that. This significantly helped with the legibility issue.

Landscape view

Considering that TV app layout was built for landscape viewing, this almost solved all the layout related issues.

Challenges

Leadership buy in

Pivoting our design strategy from a tablet UI to a scaled TV framework required extensive alignment with executive leadership.

Touch support

While the TV app was optimized for D-pad navigation, supporting touchscreen interactions required integrating custom touch patterns into the UI.

Support full journey

Addressing our key touchpoints, awareness and activation from prior, required us to design dedicated, in-app support within the TV framework

Adapting MVP & Scaling Vision

AWARENESS

MVP

To address the challenges around awareness we added Spotify messaging in welcome screen. Co-designed with partner.

We also made custom tile that would stand out on the main Home screen of United Airlines UI. Showing Spotify extensive catalogue.

Vision

Partner with the airline to drive Spotify awareness during the booking flow.

Integrate Spotify’s value proposition into booking confirmation emails to capture post-purchase interest.

Utilize OS level notification and prompts to create awareness around Spotify.

Activation

MVP

We replaced form-heavy onboarding with a custom screen featuring a single-click QR code login that instantly highlights Spotify’s value proposition.

To activate our premium plans and options we created a completely new screen which used QR code to guide users to the Premium tier plans.

Vision

Activate Spotify accounts with users United Airlines credentials

Log existing users in automatically as soon as they onboard

Allow for Multi-account setup so users can switch easily

Engagement

MVP

I worked with the TV team to build contextual content recommendations. Meaning the content user gets will be based on their trip parameters.

To give users full control, we partnered with United to design an IFE mini-player and introduced background playback logic for multitasking.

Vision

Pre-generated playlists for users to listen to during their flight.

Users should be able to pre-download their content.

Adapt features like Jam, DJ, and Prompted Playlists for airlines.

Final Notes

Unlocking Partnerships

Collaborating closely with United Airlines’ Design and Product leadership allowed us to map unique aviation-specific use cases. This foundational UX framework not only optimized the United integration but also established a scalable blueprint that unblocked future partnership opportunities.

What it meant for Business?

This partnership provided access to an annual audience of 110 million unique passengers. Initial assessments indicated that 62% of these travelers did not have a Spotify account, representing a massive, untapped acquisition pipeline to expand our market share.

First of it’s kind

This initiative presented a unique UX challenge: designing a tailored experience for a highly specific context. The resulting design system successfully expanded Spotify’s ecosystem into an entirely new market segment, unlocking a massive, previously untapped user base.

Scalability opportunities

By establishing a design vision, we didn’t just evolve the IFE experience, we built a scalable UX foundation. This modular architecture now allows Spotify to seamlessly adapt and scale across the broader transit ecosystem, unblocking future partnership opportunities in automotive, rail, and other passenger verticals.