Overview
My Role
Lead Designer & Researcher
Team
1 Designer
1 Product Manager
3 Developers
Timeline
Work Start: Spring 2024
Beta Launch: Spring 2025
GA Launch: Summer 2025
Sonos was built on making music listening easy from home.
As we began to build out Sonos Pro, we quickly realized that the way a traditional consumer manages music at home is vastly different from how businesses and stores manage music.
In 2024, when our roadmap opened up, we embarked on making a tailored control experience for our professional customers, onsite.
Now, baristas or reception staff can use a tool built for them, and admin can set guidelines on how music is played in stores.
Context
In our Sonos Pro Ecosystem, we had two touchpoint for playback control (play pause/music browse):
The Sonos Pro Dashboard being a global-level view and the Sonos Pro app, mainly leveraged for speaker set-up and configuration, as the only touch point for onsite control.
While this worked for our MVP, we received a lot of feedback and churn from customers not able to have a dedicated touch point for onsite staff to control music.
Pain Point 1:
Pro App playback control is tailored to no-restriction listening
In a home, consumers can play any music they choose at any volume.
In a business, admins may want different types of music and volumes throughout the day, and set guidelines to what the store can play.
Pain Point 2:
Pro App has a music browse-centric IA
The Sonos app, like many personal music services (Spotify, Apple Music), lands users primarily around surfacing different music options to play.
However, in businesses, the main use of the app should be around play-back control.
Pain Point 3:
Playback Control, today, is not available on desktop. Management
While the Sonos Pro Dashboard can control music from a desktop, it also surfaces sensitive information that admins don't want to surface to their employees.
While the mobile app works on a phone, businesses wanted playback control in a desktop format, to allow Lighting, POS, and Music in one device.
How might we…
The Outcome
Research
To better understand how businesses use music in-store, I devised a research plan for an on-site control intercept study.
Colleagues between Santa Barbara, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Boston spent a couple days exploring various businesses, Sonos-users or not, and asked employees and managers how they use music.
Iterations
Using our research and understandings, I began iterating through how a restructured IA may be visualized.
User research
From these iterations, I landed on 3 iterations I aimed to put in front of Sonos Pro users, both Admins as well as service staff.
Tabbed Experience
Ideating through 70/30 priority IA between playback control + music browse.
Overlay
Ideating through an IA that replaces traditional MSP hierarchy, with playback control as the first level.
Modified Sonos Web App
Ideating through an enhanced, beta Sonos Web App, offering Sonos Pro functionality.
Through our research, we were looking to answer:
Which control model resonates with business owners and employees best to navigate onsite control?
Path Forward
Modified Sonos Web App
Ease of use
Ease of implementation
Ease of scale
Modifications still needed
Prioritize playback
Surface appropriate playback controls when needed to allow for easy business functionality.
Access controls
Allow admins to set restrictions and easily lock down or open up playback control and music browse to employees.
Responsive
Pro users primarily use phones, tablets, and desktops to control music.
Design System Ideation
Between September 2021 and April 2023, our team worked towards our MVPs. With the help of our GTM team, we had a handful of businesses sign up for beta testing through this time, and together, we watched our product scale and grow.
Our initial product was used by a handful of businesses in Beta. Management was limited to three basic controls.
Our next MVP allowed us to display ongoing music data from all locations in one touch point. (Some content is blurred out in this image).
In addition to aiding the design team in work, I worked to help create and standardize our new design system, creating scalable UI elements to contain our upcoming features.
Example of a UI element I designed in the process of creating our design system (Some content is blurred out in this image).
Alongside design system work, I lead our MVP's three features: Music Service Provider (MSP) Management, Subscription Management, and Schedules.
Design Feature Ideation
Music Service Provider Management
Snippet from design ideation on how we surface MSPs through different edge cases.
Remote MSP View & Edit Specs (Some content is blurred out in this image).
Design Feature Ideation
Subscription Management
With any subscription comes a need to manage the subscription. In our case, this also demands the knowledge of the purchase process itself. Through my work in leading Subscription Management, I worked with GTM, Product, and engineers to design a management solution so only the purchaser (Business Owner) could remotely access and manage their subscription.
Initial purchase journey map to better understand internal + external stakeholders involved in the buying lifecycle.
Initial mid-fidelity journey map w/ UI to understand the Admin (Business Owner)'s process in buying and cancelling Sonos Pro.
Design Feature Ideation
Schedules
One of our most requested features for a business-grade music management system is to schedule music throughout the day remotely. As the lead designer for Schedules, I helped create our first experience milestone for this feature (as well as subsequent milestones following our MVP).
This required work around our information architecture, working in step with engineering to understand and account for all edge cases across a wide Sonos hardware portfolio, and user research to understand how can best create a scheduling service that works within business contexts.
Low-fidelity IA exploration to better understand potential routes on how Schedules may integrate into the Dashboard.
Leading initial iteration for Schedules in the Sonos Pro Dashboard (Some content is blurred out in this image).
Additional Work items
Integrating design across hardware and software touchpoints
Conducting diverse user research
Exploring & testing future concepts across platforms
Leading company-wide quarterly hackweeks
Post launch
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