Spotify Flo
A concept feature that puts live music mixing in every listener's pocket — no decks, no price tag, no expertise.
the question
what if mixing was one tap?
the friction
DJs cost. gear bulks. hosts scramble.
the shape
AI feature inside spotify.
the win
a full clickable prototype + film.
chapter 01
the vision · music at the door
Music can make or break a room. It's the difference between a dance floor and an awkward silence — and yet the people mostly responsible for that difference (hosts, friends throwing dinner parties, small event organisers) are almost never trained DJs.
The starting question was small enough to write on a napkin: what if music mixing was available to everyone, with just one tap?
"a DJ, in your pocket."
chapter 02
the process · three milestones
The build broke into three honest milestones — each one had to be real before the next made sense. Foundation, then enhancement, then a prototype real enough to test in someone's hand.
The foundation was mostly music theory: understanding that every song is built from beats, bars and phrases, and that a good transition lives at the seam between two sections — not in the middle of them.
M1 · Building a music foundation
every song runs on a grid: 1 beat → 1 bar (4 beats) → 1 phrase (4 bars / 16 beats). the grammar under every track.
M2 · Enhance the experience of the feature
Experiment how the user’s mixing process can be simplified using workshops and wireframes
M3 · Prototyping a practical solution
Design a high-fidelity functional prototype and product launch video
M1 FOUNDATIONS · UNPACKED
before flo could mix, it had to read a song.
the grid under every song
all songs share the same repeating structure — beats, bars, and phrases. one bar is four beats, one phrase is four bars (sixteen beats). once flo can count the grid, everything else is measurement, not magic.
1 phrase = 4 bars = 16 beats
predictable sections
identifying sections by ear is slow. but most pop songs reuse the same skeleton: intro → verse → pre-chorus → chorus → bridge → interlude → outro. that predictability is what tells flo where a transition is even allowed to live.
intro · verse · chorus · bridge · outro
labeling the seams
for each section, count the bars: intro (9), chorus (8), verse 1 (15), pre-chorus (8)… that map is the whole trick — smooth transitions can only happen at a section end, on the downbeat of the next.
smooth mix = section end + downbeat
a real breakdown from the research — every section of the track counted in bars, so the app knows exactly which seams are safe to mix on.
M2 ENHANCEMENT · WORKSHOP
sketches in hand, users at the table.
A hands-on workshop turned early sketches into real feedback — testing usability, surfacing new ideas, and pointing out where the flow still tripped people up.
participants sketched their own enhancements — tool tips, AI reordering, tilt gestures, and a "party mode" toggle — each one a hint about what the interface was missing.
wins in green, breakages in red, quick fixes in yellow — a clean map of what the M3 prototype had to solve.
chapter 03
the system · a song, mapped
Once songs are treated as structures instead of three-minute blobs, mixing stops being magic. Every track becomes a rhythm of sections with predictable lengths — and the app can do the counting so the listener doesn't have to.
Flo's job is to read the map, find compatible seams between two songs, and let anyone press one button to blend them. The design language leans on Spotify's own visual system, kept quiet on top and expressive at the transition.
design north star
"one tap between two songs."
— the whole product, on one line.
chapter 04
in the hand · and on the balance sheet
The final artefact is a step-by-step walkthrough in Figma plus a short promo film built in Rotato and DaVinci Resolve — the kind of thing a product team could react to in a room, not just on a slide.
higher conversions
exclusive mixing could nudge free users toward premium.
expanded reach
casual listeners and music nerds, in the same feature.
new monetisation
premium mix packs, artist-curated transitions, AI blends.
milestones
foundation · enhance · ship
03
months
solo, end-to-end
05
artefacts
prototype & promo
figma + film
credits · spotify flo
a solo mix of research, design, and small filmmaking.
- product & interactionaashika parekh
- prototypefigma · rotato
- promo filmdavinci resolve
- mixing referenceyouDJmixer
up next · 01
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