Spotify Blend X Jukebox
In this project, I explored how the Aesthetics of Interaction can transform passive listening into a collaborative, emotionally engaging experience. Inspired by the tactile charm of vintage jukeboxes and the personalization of Spotify Blend playlists, the concept reimagines group music sharing through a physical device that encourages embodied, intuitive, and social interactions.
Instead of everyone scrolling individually through phones, users interact with a central device, a modern jukebox, to vote on songs, influence the playlist, and physically engage with music choices through a rotary knob, tactile buttons, and ambient lighting feedback.
Current digital streaming platforms are isolating. I wanted to bring back the collective joy of music selection, where interactions are shared and decisions are made visibly and physically. Drawing on frameworks such as:
-
Frogger Framework – to balance feedforward and feedback through lighting and rotation cues
-
Soma Design – to emphasize sensory engagement, textures, and movement
-
Affordances – to ensure interactions are naturally discoverable and intuitive
…I shaped a product where emotion, motion, and music come together.
Design Motivations
Insights into the project
Enhancing User
Control
The black and gold color scheme was chosen to embody modern minimalism while enhancing aesthetic interaction through material and visual perception.
My design contributions
-
Developed and iterated the rotary knob and vote system that dynamically reorders songs based on group feedback.
-
Designed LED lighting feedback (green = like, red = dislike, pulsing = selection) to make interactions more expressive.
-
Prototyped low-fidelity models and refined affordances to minimize cognitive load while enhancing sensory appeal.
-
Defined a black-and-gold visual language for minimalist elegance that contrasts the retro form with a modern identity.
This project deepened my understanding of how interaction can be felt, not just seen. By combining tactile and visual elements, I learned how design can shift the focus from functionality to emotionally resonant experiences. Now, I view aesthetics as not just surface-level beauty, but something that permeates action, feedback, and feeling.