Author: ejustice

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House Party: A Spotify Extension by Elon & Sankalp

Abstract

Many platforms that enable connection and bonding despite physical location already exist; separately, many music streaming services are already in operation. However, few platforms bridge the gap between music and social connection, despite the many opportunities for bonding and sociability that music can create. In order to bridge this gap between music and social connection via distance, we propose an extension to Spotify which allows multiple users to stream the same playlist of songs simultaneously. The primary purpose of this extension is to create a new avenue for social connection and deepening community through music, especially for groups dispersed across large distances or who are otherwise unable to be physically together. In this paper, we survey relevant findings from existing literature on the Spotify platform, identify a need for sociability and agency, formulate four use-case types to our proposed extension, then conclude by discussing its limitations, implications of its use, and future directions for its design as an intervention into music and social spaces of a connected world.  

Concept Overview

House Party is an extension that runs on top of the Spotify platform that may be used on either a computer or a smartphone. This extension allows multiple users in different locations to stream the same playlist of songs simultaneously. This extension does not alter the core functionality of Spotify, but rather builds onto Spotify’s existing features to improve the app and give users a new experience within a familiar platform. The primary purpose of this extension is to create a new avenue for social connection and deepening community through music, especially for groups dispersed across large distances or who are unable to be physically together for any reason. 

Design Audience 

The intended audience for House Party can be summarized as follows: They are Spotify users from age 15-30 who value music, emotional and social connection with others, and agency and diversity in their musical selections.

Although any Spotify user could certainly successfully download and use the extension, House Party will specifically be designed with younger Millennial and Gen-Z users of the platform (around age 15 to age 30) in mind, as they are more likely to have the habits, interests, and technological savvy that would make this product desirable. Furthermore, the Spotify user base already skews toward this younger demographic, as a 2018 Goodwater Capital survey found that Spotify is the most used music streaming service for people under the age of 30.1 House Party will not target users based on gender or location, though it should be noted that the existing Spotify user base is overwhelmingly American and European (over 65% combined), with Latin America comprising a significant minority (22%) and users from the rest of the world totaling 13% of the user base.2

These Millennial and Gen-Z users are used to being in constant connection with friends, family, and other groups with which they identify. From social media such as Instagram and Twitter to text messages to large-scale social events such as concerts and sporting events, our target audience enjoys both physical and digital interaction with others. This is especially true of interactions with friends, significant others, and other close relationships – Event Manager Blog reports that millennials are more likely to attend an event if they can do so with friends,3 and these findings appear to map onto digital activities as well. Though many forms of digital interaction already exist with great success, few music-centric platforms have social functionality, despite scientific evidence that listening to music together can play a role in closeness and connection.4 This is especially troubling in the age of a global pandemic, where large-scale musical gatherings like concerts and festivals are postponed until further notice, and even small-scale gatherings of friends are prohibited (or at the very least unwise). 

Beyond its connecting capabilities, Millennials and Gen-Z users value music on its own: A 2018 survey by digital media company Sweety High found that 94% of Gen Z respondents cited music as “important” or “very important” to their lives,5 and a 2017 report by Spotify states that 3 out of 4 Millennials say music is part of how they define who they are.6 Both generations tend to have musical tastes that span across genres, with songs from multiple genres often played in succession within the same listening session.7 Therefore, while “old-school” options such as radio, or recent developments in live-streamed concerts and festivals, allow for connection via music despite distance, these avenues often lack the musical diversity our target audience desires. Furthermore, users have no agency in the artists or songs that are played, despite the fact that ⅓ of user time on Spotify is spent listening to user-generated playlists, suggesting a desire to be in control of or influence the musical selection a significant portion of the time.8 Data from our own pilot survey of  music streaming platform users, all of whom fall into Gen Z and Millennial age groups, correlated with these findings, as most respondents indicated a strong interest in having agency in the types of music they listen to, as well as in their experience of the platform in general.9

Background Analysis

Many platforms that enable connection and bonding despite physical location already exist; separately, many music streaming services are already in operation. However, few platforms bridge the gap between music and social connection, despite the many opportunities for bonding and sociability that music can create.

While social media platforms have become nearly inumerable, a few stand out as major players. According to Search Engine Journal, the seven most popular social media platforms in 2020 are (in order) Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Reddit.10 All of these platforms allow for varying degrees of social connection across distance, often through direct messaging users, posting updates through statuses or stories, or commenting on posts. Some platforms even engage music directly – some notable examples include Instagram’s ability to add clips of songs to Stories, as well as Facebook groups and subreddits dedicated solely to discussions of a particular band. However, these capabilities remain somewhat limited: Instagram Stories only allow up to 15 seconds of a song to play at a time, and threads discussing more popular bands can often be large and unruly, involving hundreds or even thousands of users and therefore missing the intimacy of a conversation between friends or a few die-hard music lovers.

Many music streaming services exist as well: Goodwater Capital classifies the major music streaming platforms as Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Amazon Music, and Soundcloud.11 Of these, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Amazon Music function quite similarly: They all allow users to search and stream music, create their own playlists, and browse pre-generated playlists often based on algorithms. Pandora, meanwhile, does not center itself around playlists but rather generates a continuous stream of music based on a user’s initial input of one or multiple artists or songs. (It should be noted that Pandora does allow some playlist functionality, but this is only available with a Premium membership, which costs $9.99 per month; neither the Free nor the $5.99 Pandora Plus memberships allow users to create their own playlists.12) While Soundcloud does allow the creation of playlists for all users, the platform focuses primarily on the relationship between artists and their fans, allowing users to comment directly within tracks13; it is also primarily used by artists who are not signed to any particular record label and therefore tend to have smaller followings. While this ability to form connections between artists and fans is important, it leaves little room for fans to connect with one another.

Therefore, from our survey of existing social and musical platforms, two important conclusions can be drawn: Social platforms offer limited ability to engage with music directly, and music platforms offer little opportunity to connect with fellow music lovers.

Intervention Rationale

In order to bridge this gap between music and social connection via distance, we propose an extension to Spotify which allows multiple users to stream the same playlist of songs simultaneously. The purpose of the extension is to allow for emotional connection and deepening of community through music, a function which both major social networks and major music streaming services are currently lacking.

     Part One: Why Spotify?

A 2018 report by Goodwater Capital found that Spotify ranked highest in user satisfaction across multiple measures, among the major music streaming services Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Soundcloud.14 Of these platforms, the report also found that Spotify has the highest percentage of users under 30 and ranked as a favorite among younger users.15 These stats are important for multiple reasons. First, because House Party functions as an extension of, rather than an amendment to, Spotify’s core functionality, it is important that users are already generally satisfied with their experience. Many survey respondents noted that they intended to maintain or increase their usage of the platform, and a common sentiment was that of using the service every day.16 These findings bode well for an extension that introduces additional functionality to an already well-loved service. Next, House Party’s target audience is younger Millennial and Gen-Z users aged 15-30. Since Spotify’s existing audience already skews toward and is a favorite of this age group, it is likely that they would be interested in an extension that builds atop a platform they already know and use.

Pilot Survey & Initial Findings

In order to further understand current uses and limitations to Spotify, we designed a pilot survey for an initial sampling of members from our MAS.S67 Fixing Social Media, at first with a small group of peers during our class, and later with the general mailing list after our class. The pilot survey consisted of three central questions: “how do you use Spotify currently?”, “what are some of your surprising/unexpected uses of Spotify?”, “what can’t you do with Spotify?”. We built the pilot survey to collect responses using Google Doc (in-class) and Google Forms (after-class), after which we imported each set of responses into a table. We then used MIRO, an online whiteboard for collaborative work, to code responses for themes using an approach to qualitative analysis resembling an open card sort, in which responses are cards to be sorted by categories to be determined through the sorting, rather than before the sorting. This approach not only allowed us not only to sort cards (responses) by categories (themes) as they emerged, but also map both first-order and second-order connections between cards across the different categories. Additionally, each response in a given set of responses was assigned one of three colors based on which of the three pilot survey questions it submitted as a response to. All of the responses were coded using the same categories, which included whether a given response mentions agency, mentions algorithms, mentions content, mentions platforms, mentions sociability, mentions device use, or mentions purpose. Cards mentioning several of these themes underwent an additional step, in which each of the categories interpreted were ranked by importance. These rankings determined placement of the card on a first category (most important), a first-order connection to another second category (second most important), as well as a second-order connection to another a third category (third most important), where the first-order connection is a line matching the color of the given card (blue, green, red) and the second-order connection is a line matching the color of all the categories (yellow). From this exercise, we found that agency, sociability, and purpose appeared most often in responses, and that most responses were traceable to sociability as either a first-order or second-order theme.


Figure 1:  Table of pilot survey responses and qualitative findings from coding exercise.

     Part Two: House Party’s Purpose

House Party’s purpose is to enable new forms of emotional connection and deepening of community through music, especially when that connection is not able to occur in the same physical space. This idea sprouted from an experience co-author Elon had while quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each week, she and a group of friends met over video chat to talk and play games. She was listening to music over her Bluetooth speaker, and her friends could vaguely hear the music through the video chat. Eventually, a song came on that everyone liked, and they all spontaneously began to dance – a dance party that spanned from Nashville, TN to Pensacola, FL to Incheon, South Korea, nearly 7000 miles total. After the song ended, the mood of the group had palpably lifted. This experience helped Elon realize how important music can be in creating bonds, and that it can be a useful tool in connecting people regardless of their location or ability to be together. This revelation inspired her, and she wondered how she might create something that allows groups to connect and bond over music – together, at the same time – even from thousands of miles apart. Thus, the idea for House Party was born, and with it its purpose to bring people together through music – from anywhere and for any reason.

The extension’s name, House Party, has a double meaning. First, it’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that people all over the world are confined to their homes during a pandemic, such as COVID-19; therefore, any party is quite literally a house party. Beyond this, though, House Party is meant to evoke the feeling of a more traditional house party – a highly social event that brings people together, in which the mood is kept up by music, and where any attendee can hear the same music as everyone else, regardless of their location in the house. Of course, it is worth noting that Houseparty, a video conferencing app, already has a markedly similar name; however, we believe that our extension is truer to the spirit of a house party, and that since it is a music-centric extension rather than a video-centric standalone app, it is sufficiently distinguishable from the Houseparty app.

Platform Infrastructure & Relevant Features

As a digital platform, Spotify relies on a technical infrastructure to sustain its functionality as a both an user application and as a media services provider. In particular, Spotify’s technical infrastructure is built with a microservice architecture, allowing each layer of its platform stack to remain at once maintainable and testable by both software engineers and product developers. In 2011, Spotify introduced Spotify App Finder, a service for third-party developers to create and host apps for use by members who had Spotify Premium. In 2014, Spotify discontinued this space for third-party developers upon introducing a Web Application Programming Interface (API), which it claimed would fulfill many of the advantages to App Finder. In this time, spaces for synchronous playback experiences had emerged on the Spotify platform, through the group listening rooms of Soundrop, a third-party app around which a community formed. However, because the App Finder API had been discontinued, Soundrop was forced to close. As a result of this closure, efforts to build open-source alternatives, such as Soundbounce, were soon formed yet inevitably relegated to remaining standalone players, in which Spotify Premium members have to log-in through a separate app, until Spotify enables developer support for apps in their Web player. In the six years since then, Spotify has yet to have made this decision.

As a digital platform, Spotify currently offers three features that are relevant to our proposed intervention. First, Spotify publicly allows synchronous “group sessions”, in which users can add songs to a shared song queue with a limitation of one device playback at any time. Second, Spotify publicly allows asynchronous “collaborative playlists”, in which users can add songs to a shared song list which multiple devices can playback at any time. Third, Spotify privately allows synchronous “social sessions”, in which users can add songs to a shared session, multiple devices can playback, and invite other users to listen along together at once, wherever they are. Despite this feature being most relevant to our extension, it’s only usable for Spotify employees.

User Journey & Use Cases

House Party is designed with two primary use-case-types in mind. However, we envision two additional use-case-types that could be implemented with additional functionality, perhaps in a subsequent update to the extension. The primary use-case-types can be characterized broadly as one-to-one and many-to-one, and the envisioned future types can be characterized as one-to-many and many-to-many.

Primary Use Case 1: One-To-One

In a one-to-one case type, a group of users are given access to a collaborative Spotify playlist. Users with editing access may add and remove songs in the playlist (as is currently the case with Spotify’s ‘collaborative playlists’ feature), but these users also all have the ability to turn House Party Mode on or off. When House Party Mode is on and a user hits play on the playlist, all users with access will receive a push notification to “Join the Party.” Any user who then tunes in will then hear the playlist simultaneously with other users. Anyone with access may queue up or skip songs, or play or pause the music. This will remain the case until House Party Mode is turned off.

A first imagined use case within this type is that of a party among friends, thrown over a video chat app such as Zoom or Facetime due either to distance or inability to congregate. Before the party, one friend would create a collaborative playlist and invite all their friends to contribute songs. During the party, each friend could hear the same music from their respective speakers as they chat, and any friend could skip a song, pause the music, or queue up a song they’d like to hear. A second imagined use case within this type is that of a couple in a long distance relationship who would like to feel connected to one another as they go about their daily routines. Each partner would contribute to a collaborative playlist with songs they both enjoy or that they would like to introduce to the other, and they would listen together as each partner gets ready for work in the morning.

Primary Use Case 2: Many-To-One

In a many-to-one case type, multiple users can access, edit, and control the playlist in the same way as a one-to-one case type. However, in this case, another user can stream the playlist without having these same privileges. Those with control privileges would access the playlist through the collaborative playlist function, and any of them may turn House Party Mode on, queue up or skip music, etc. The user without control privileges would access the playlist by a link, subscription, or search (if it is publicly searchable within Spotify). When House Party Mode is turned on, all those who are collaborators (with control privileges) and the listener (if subscribed to the playlist) would receive a “Join the Party” notification. 

An imagined use case within this type is a group of friends gifting a Spotify playlist to another friend for their birthday. All those gifting the playlist would contribute to the collaborative playlist, and once it was complete the group would send a link to the playlist to their friend. The group would agree on a time to listen together, and the friend whose birthday it is would be delighted at all the songs their friends have chosen to play.

Future Use Case 1: One-To-Many

In a one-to-many case type, only one user has access to the playlist and therefore is the only one with the ability to add and remove songs, turn House Party Mode on and off, and queue up, skip, play, or pause the playlist. Other users may reach the playlist through a link or subscribe to the playlist (if it is publicly searchable within Spotify), but they cannot make any changes; however, those who are subscribed will receive a “Join the Party” push notification when House Party Mode is turned on. The “host” user can publicize the time they planned to stream the playlist so that other users knew the time to tune in.

Imagined use cases in this category are well-known local or national DJs compiling a list of songs for a Friday night quarantine dance party and artists hosting live listening parties for their new (or old and well-loved) albums.

Future Use-Case 2: Many-to-Many

Finally, a many-to-many case type would operate in mostly the same way as a many-to-one case type, except that multiple listeners may synchronously stream the playlist instead of one. As in the previous case, any user with control privileges can turn House Party Mode on and off, queue up or skip music, etc. Users without control privileges may access the playlist by a link, subscription, or search (if it is publicly searchable within Spotify). Furthermore, any of the host users may publicize the time they planned to stream the playlist so others knew when to tune in.

Imagined use cases in this category are groups of friends creating a playlist to stream to their wider friend circles and multiple artists co-creating and streaming a playlist for their fans.

Of course, House Party’s capabilities should not be limited to these particular use cases. Certainly, the extension’s target audience is known for their creativity and ingenuity, and there is no limit to the situations in which they can apply it. These use cases are simply a jumping-off point, with the four broad types serving to showcase the extension’s functionality in different situations.

Fig. 2: Mockup of playlist with House Party Mode turned on and a notification when another user begins a stream.

Intended Experience

As previously stated, the purpose behind this intervention is to create a new avenue for connection and community through music, especially in times when groups are unable to be together physically. The technical goal of the project is to successfully function atop Spotify’s existing user interface while providing users a new option in their experience of the platform. Success in reaching both of these goals may be measured in how well House Party meets several objectives. Objectives measuring success include the following:

  • Number of users who install the extension
  • Number of users who use the extension on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
  • Variety of use cases in which the extension is implemented (determined by surveys)
  • Overall user satisfaction with the extension (determined by surveys)
  • Sense of deepened community and social bonding between users (determined by surveys)
  • Regularity of bugs or crashes which make the extension difficult or impossible to use 
  • Legal or technical issues that arise with Spotify that make the platform inhospitable to the extension

Limitations, Implications, & Future Directions

Certainly, the House Party extension has a number of limitations, implications, and avenues for improvement. A major limitation of the extension in its current state is that it works best with Spotify Premium (which costs $9.99 per month)17 and would not work as well with Spotify Free. This is because Spotify Free users only have access to a limited number of song skips per hour and must listen to an ad after a certain number of consecutive songs.18 If users with Spotify Premium listened synchronously with a Spotify Free user, it is likely that the entire group would have to listen to the ads alongside them, and the Free user would be unable to access the full functionality of the House Party extension without the ability to skip songs. Another limitation is that House Party can’t access songs outside of Spotify’s existing library. This means that as far as the extension could enable sociability, the diversity of music itself would be determined by the catalogue of artists and albums made available through Spotify.

House Party brings foreseeable implications as well. First, the extension may further entrench people in the music preferences of their existing networks or the social groups with which they identify. We believe this concern could be resolved in part by using in-app prompts from Spotify that suggest music from music or artists outside the collective preferences at play when House Party mode is turned on. Second, this extension could become another way for trolls to access or to otherwise cause harm to communities. We believe this concern could be resolved in part  through increased security around playlist link sharing such that when using House Party is in use and a playlist is shared with different listeners or users, they are brought into a waiting room before being allowed access to editing capabilities of the playlist. We believe implications like these have become part and parcel of designing social media, in a world where various online platforms have come to face nearly identical concerns in recent years.

Finally, a number of future improvements could be made to this extension. First is additional functionality that would allow our envisioned future use-case-types to be viable, as the extension is currently designed to work best on a small scale, likely with groups who know one another personally. Future improvements could allow the extension to scale up and work for mass audiences so that artists, DJs, or others with large followings could stream to all their fans at once. This could also include the addition of a comments feature, perhaps similar in form to Facebook Live, where listeners could make requests, reach out to the host(s) with comments, or discuss the music with other listeners. A second future improvement is that of an algorithm that enables the extension to do more of the work of ordering and fitting songs together in a playlist so the music flows together smoothly: Although the users would retain total agency of the songs within a playlist, the extension would reorder the songs for a more seamless listening experience. Of course, some users may feel uncomfortable with the use of an algorithm in any form, so this feature would remain entirely optional.

References

  1. Understanding Spotify: Making Music Through Innovation, Goodwater Capital, March 15, 2018, https://www.goodwatercap.com/thesis/understanding-spotify#important-disclosures. 
  2. Mansoor Iqbal, “Spotify Usage and Revenue Statistics (2020),” Business of Apps, April 24, 2020, https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/.
  3. Kelli White, “How to Attract and Engage Millennial Attendees for Your Event,” Event Manager Blog, October 17, 2018, https://www.eventmanagerblog.com/how-to-attract-millenials-for-event.
  4. Jill Suttie, “How Music Bonds Us Together,” Greater Good Magazine, June 28, 2016, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_music_bonds_us_together.
  5. Brittany Hodak, “New Study Spotlights Gen Z’s Unique Music Consumption Habits,” Forbes, March 6, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/brittanyhodak/2018/03/06/new-study-spotlights-gen-zs-unique-music-consumption-habits/#22b9970d42d0.
  6. Spotify for Brands, “Culture Next,” Global Trends Report, no. 1 (2019): 1-19. https://www.spotifyforbrands.com/en-US/insights/millennial-guide/
  7. Spotify for Brands, “Culture Next,” and Brittany Hodak, “New Study Spotlights Gen Z’s Unique Music Consumption Habits.”
  8.  Mansoor Iqbal, “Spotify Usage and Revenue Statistics (2020).” 
  9. Data collected in pilot survey conducted April 29, 2020.
  10. Kristi Kellogg, “The 7 Biggest Social Media Sites in 2020,” Search Engine Journal, February 3, 2020, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/#close.
  11.  Understanding Spotify: Making Music Through Innovation. 
  12.  “Music and Podcasts, Free and On-Demand,” Pandora, accessed May 2, 2020, https://www.pandora.com.
  13. “Creators on SoundCloud,” SoundCloud, accessed May 2, 2020, https://creators.soundcloud.com.
  14.  Understanding Spotify: Making Music Through Innovation.
  15. ibid.
  16. ibid.
  17.  “Spotify,” Spotify, accessed May 2, 2020, https://www.spotify.com/us/premium/.
  18. Henry T. Casey, “Spotify Free vs Premium: Should You Pay to Play?,” Tom’s Guide, March 28, 2019, https://www.tomsguide.com/us/spotify-free-vs-premium,news-24850.html.
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Final Project Proposal: Musical Community-Building in a Time of Isolation

The current COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered every facet of daily life as we know it. Unemployment in the U.S. is at a record high; schools, churches, and all social gatherings have been cancelled until further notice; even going outside for a walk requires careful consideration (Will I be able to stay 6 feet away from others? Do I have something I could fashion into a mask?). Times such as these are nearly unprecedented (certainly in modern times) and understandably scary. And extreme isolation, while obviously necessary to combat the spread of COVID-19, has left many people feeling lonely, sad, and frustrated.

Certainly, now more than ever we have the technology to keep us emotionally connected while physically apart: Zoom happy hours, game nights through Jackbox and Houseparty, and Facebook and Instagram challenges have become the norm for interaction in the past few weeks. But still, it is easy for boredom and loneliness to creep in, and not all communities and interest groups are being well-served (or at least served to the best of their ability) through these platforms.

My idea for a final project comes from an experience I had last week. A group of my college friends and I have begun hosting weekly hangouts through Houseparty, where we play games, chat, and generally try to think about anything other than the current situation in which we find ourselves. Last week, I had Spotify playing on my laptop while I used Houseparty on my phone, allowing my friends to (vaguely) hear my music while we hung out. At one point, the song “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd (a current favorite for Tik Tok videos) came on, and the whole group – all six of us – spontaneously broke into dance for the entirety of the song. It was honestly the most genuinely joyful experience I’d had since I began self-quarantining 3 weeks prior, and afterward the mood of the group was palpably lifted. This moment of connection through music had given us something positive to hold onto – a small moment with a big impact. And in times such as these, I think that these small moments are not only meaningful, but needed.

This experience got me thinking: Couldn’t some technology exist that allows moments like this to happen more often? Music is an integral part of the background of many people’s everyday: Imagine all the songs that drift through morning commutes, evenings spent cooking dinner, nights at parties or on a friend’s back porch. Entire communities that gather for the sole purpose of listening to music (concerts and festivals) will be unable to congregate until at least the fall, if not longer. Music naturally brings people together and gives new meaning to a moment. And while we’re physically isolated, I think music can do more to bring us together.

Therefore, my idea for the final project in this class is to create an extension across an existing music platform (perhaps Spotify, since it’s quite widely-used) that allows groups of people to listen to the same playlist of music synchronously, much like listening to a radio station. To my knowledge, no extension such as this currently exists, and it isn’t built into Spotify’s existing functionality (I can’t speak to other platforms like Apple or Amazon Music). While the structure of playlists would remain the same – a playlist could either be created by one person or made into a collaborative playlist to which others can contribute – this extension would allow the playlist creator to hit play and for anyone with the link to the playlist to “tune in” and hear the music at the same time. The extension could possibly also allow for the option for other listeners to have equal control of the playlist, hitting pause, queuing the next song, or skipping a song. This could create a functionally similar environment to what you might experience at a friend’s party: Their playlist is playing over their speakers, but anyone could grab their phone and change what’s playing. 

I imagine this extension being used by two main groups. The first is as I just described – groups of friends. If my friends and I used this platform during our weekly Houseparty hangouts, we could each hear the music through our respective laptops (or speakers) instead of them hearing it in the background of our video session. They could change the song instead of having to ask me to change it, and we could all feel a little more united and with perhaps a bit more normalcy – this isn’t so much different from a normal hangout, we’re just in different places. The second group could be musical communities, fan groups, followers of an artist, etc. In this case, I imagine that a “leader” in one of these communities could make a playlist and play it at designated times, and others in the community could gather to listen as that person plays their playlist. Although this may not have as much built-in interaction, it could still create a sense of unity among those in the group, as they know that others are listening to the playlist along with them. And if someone well-known or famous created and aired their playlist, I could see people from all over the world tuning in to hear their Friday Night Mix. 

I am obviously open to collaboration and input on this idea, as I know it’s not perfect. (First off, it requires that someone has Spotify or another platform to even access it.) However, I do think that this is a project that could feasibly be created and that might allow for some small amount of good in this scary time. If anyone is interested in working on this or has any suggestions, I’m absolutely open to talking and thinking more!  

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Design Workshop Brainstorm: Alex, Gabi, Emily, and Elon

For our breakout session brainstorm, we began thinking about ideas of building community through music during a time of isolation. Specifically, we began thinking about how many of the U.S.’s most popular music festivals – Coachella, Bonnaroo, Hangout, and many others – have been either postponed or outright cancelled this summer due to the coronavirus pandemic. So, we began to brainstorm: How might we create a space for would-be festival goers to “congregate” for a festival atmosphere when so many have been cancelled?

Our wildest idea: Have each festival “attendee” create a separate space in their home for camping – no beds allowed!

Our simplest idea: A festival- or fan-created “dress code” that attendees could follow on a designated weekend – make a festival outfit out of things in your closet!

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Online Community Case Study: Being TTA on Kindara

It’s a truth known by nearly every uterus-owning human in the world: From the time you’re twelve (or so) years old, you can expect your Aunt Flo to come for a visit around once a month. In Western culture, the female period is often something simultaneously celebrated and shamed: A mother may exult her daughter’s transition into womanhood as she teaches her to use her first menstrual product, yet high schoolers giggle or cringe when their health class touches on menstruation, and adult women hide their tampons up their sleeves on the way to the restroom and whisper requests to female coworkers for a spare.

Despite Western culture’s reluctance to publicly discuss the menstrual cycle, scientific studies have shown that the recurring processes of menstruation and ovulation are integral to a woman’s overall health – a fact little known by many of the women who experience this cycle every month.1 Even lesser known is that the phases of the menstrual cycle have telltale physical signs that allow women to understand what phase of the cycle they are in, and that these signs can be reliably used to avoid or achieve a pregnancy without the use of hormonal birth control.2 While this idea often evokes thoughts of the Rhythm Method and unplanned pregnancies, this method, called Fertility Awareness, is quite different. Through the tracking of a woman’s basal body temperature, cervical fluid, and (optionally) cervical position throughout the month, she may consistently understand what phase of the cycle she is in and thus whether or not she is fertile.3 And as more and more women refuse the use of artificial birth control – whether due to moral reasons or frustration with its side effects – Fertility Awareness Methods (FAM), and the technologies used to track the menstrual cycle (in FAM, called charting) for the purpose of avoiding pregnancy, are becoming more popular.

One such technology used for charting is Kindara, a mobile app available for both Apple and Android phones that currently has over 1.6 million downloads.4 In addition to its charting capabilities, Kindara has a community forum platform in which users may share their charts to ask questions, get feedback, and share their triumphs and struggles with the method. Although a chart may be shared for any reason, there are four main categories in which a chart is posted: Trying to Avoid (TTA), Trying to Conceive (TTC), Trying to Whatever (TTW), and Charting For Health (CFH). Delineated by choosing a category when setting up a user profile and “tagging” a chart with one or more of these abbreviations, these categories reveal each user’s primary motivations for using FAM. Some of these communities have extensive overlap – for example, a woman whose profile reads “CFH” may also tag her chart as “TTA” so that both groups can see it – while others experience little interaction (it is rare for a TTC woman to comment on TTA charts, for example). The TTA and TTC communities are the largest user groups on Kindara, each with quite different community cultures. For the purpose of this case study, I will focus only on Kindara’s TTA community message board. 

I should first place myself within the context of this community: I have been a Kindara user since January 2019. Although I personally began charting for health reasons, I was fascinated by the concept of avoiding pregnancy without the use of artificial hormones (a practice I learned about shortly before downloading Kindara) and thus marked my profile as Trying To Avoid. Although I didn’t begin posting my own charts until September 2019, I scrolled through the charts posted in the TTA forum almost daily, slowly gaining a deeper understanding of how various methods of FAM (and there are several!) marked the beginning of the “fertile window” (the point of the cycle in which unprotected intercourse could result in pregnancy) and confirmed that ovulation had occurred, thus ending the fertile period. I also read the comments left on charts, noting the corrections to improper method use, answered questions, emotional support, and textual resources women who didn’t seem to know each other personally often provided to one another. And the more I scrolled through the forum, the more I thought: This community of women is something unique. When I was asked in March 2020 to conduct a case study of a healthy online community, I knew I wanted to delve further into the dynamics of this online space. 

I’ll start with a brief description of the app’s layout. Upon opening the Kindara app, you are first taken to the “Data” page, in which a user can input their daily observations (basal body temperature, cervical fluid, cervical position), menstruation, intercourse, and optional custom data inputs that can be whatever that particular user wishes to track (common examples include acne, cramping, and exercise). Other pages allow you to see a calendar, which (when set to TTA) predicts your next menstruation; a chart that displays all your data for your current cycle; and the community section, which contains the community forum (automatically on the thread of whatever fertility goal you’ve tagged yourself – in this case, TTA – though it is possible to search through other threads as well), your personal profile, and notifications from comments and direct messages. The user profile is fairly basic: It shows a circular picture, the user’s username, their fertility goal, (optionally) their age, (optionally) a short bio, and whatever charts the user has publicly shared. A common trend in Kindara users is to maintain some degree of anonymity in their profiles; while many users share their age and their backgrounds as they relate to their fertility goal (for example, Got married 2/14/2017, had a baby boy 7/03/2019, now TTA until we’re ready for our second!), fewer share their names and photos. Photos are certainly more common than names: Some users choose pictures from their weddings, previous births, or selfies as their profile photos; however, most users’ photos are of objects, scenery, and occasionally their children or pets, and many have no profile photo at all (Kindara automatically supplies a cartoon silhouette of a non-gendered person from the chest up if there is no profile photo). Sharing full names on Kindara is quite rare, as well. Some usernames appear to be based upon the user’s real-world name: For example, many usernames will be just a first name, such as “Emma,” often followed by an emoji; others, such as “Mrs. B” hint at the user’s last name. Most usernames, though, appear to be unrelated to any real name, such as “Ocelot,” “EmeraldJoy,” “GHBRuby,” or a seemingly random combinations of letters and numbers. 

This tendency toward full or partial anonymity seems to lend itself toward users feeling comfortable publicly sharing and discussing the intimate details of these personal (and typically private) parts of life – intercourse and menstruation – and the multitude of factors that are intertwined with them, such as chronic disease, pregnancy loss, and relationship troubles. Can anyone offer their opinion on my level of risk? […][U]sed a condom but the condom slipped about ¾ of the way off, reads one chart by a woman who below tagged “marital issues” and “husband cheated.” We are having absolutely horrible marriage issues and another child is not in my plan.5 Another user’s chart, tagged “cyst,” reads, I was just hoping to get some input on an ovarian cyst. […] It is intense and when it comes on nothing makes it better. Even Motrin, rest, or stretching. […] I feel completely dysfunctional and basically live in constant fear of when the pain is going to suddenly set in and cripple me. I feel like I sound like I am pathetic but I DO have a high tolerance for pain and I just can’t get around this one.6

Comments on posts such as these, and even on more mundane posts simply asking if a user has confirmed ovulation, tend to be largely positive and encouraging. Nearly every publicly shared chart on the TTA message board receives at least one comment, regardless of the chart’s contents, and those asking for advice tend to generate threads of responses in which women provide resources, share personal experiences, and generally offer emotional support to the original poster. Kindara’s culture of readily-given help and support to fellow users became even more apparent to me after I made my own post on the forum asking if anyone would like to answer some questions for an academic case study: Within six hours of my post I received five messages from women willing to be interviewed. Everyone who responded indicated that they felt Kindara was a mostly positive environment, especially compared to other online platforms in which they participated (like general use of Facebook or Twitter, though one noted that she was in FAM-based groups on these platforms that she found to be an even more positive experience than Kindara).7  “I think there’s a sense that we’re all in this together on some level,” said Heather*, a 36-year-old and user of Kindara for one year, when asked why she thought Kindara’s culture of support was so prevalent. “We’ve always been in the fight for reproductive health as a team, and this is an empowering method to prevent unwanted pregnancies or achieve them at the time times [sic] in our lives.”8 Allison, age 22 and user of Kindara for eight months, made a similar point: “[B]ecause we’re discussing our sex lives and bodies, it’s very personal, and I feel many people are naturally respectful. Which I’m very glad for, because people are doing this without having to be told to. […] Kindara feels like a very safe space to openly share very intimate information about your life, and encounter other women who genuinely want to help. I don’t have to worry about running into drama onto Kindara, I feel like I will get a good answer in response to one of my questions most of the time, and it just has good energy.”9 

Of course, like any online platform, Kindara is not completely free of conflict or misunderstanding. Although Kindara tends to attract users with certain characteristics in common – most (though certainly not all) users seem to identify as heterosexual women, and many indicate that they are in monogamous relationships – these users come from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds, with a wide range of values and moral beliefs. These differences can at times naturally lead to conflict, especially concerning controversial topics. Multiple women I interviewed, for example, mentioned an incident in which a user revealed she had had an abortion; this post led to a commenter telling the poster that abortion was wrong and sparked a debate in the comments section. Such contentious arguments as these, though, are rare; more common are users who admonish others for incorrectly implementing their chosen method of Fertility Awareness. Although these users are often well-intentioned – in FAM, breaking one of the “rules” (i.e. having unprotected sex during the fertile window) is often more likely to result in an unintended pregnancy than, say, missing a birth control pill, so extreme caution is warranted – they may come off to other users as the “fertility police,” as Natasha (age 25 and user of Kindara for 11 months) puts it. “I have seen people who mean well but might sometimes say things in a way that can come off as abrupt or even a tad rude. Amongst the TTA women then I’ve seen on a fairly regular basis (say 2 or 3 times a week) some instances of people almost trying to ‘police’ other people. I’ve seen people quickly jump to tell a fellow TTA woman that her ‘hearts on CD 8 and 11** are outside of the rules!’ etc… Although these people might come off as the ‘fertility police’ they still clearly intend to be kind and helpful.”10 Conversely, Heather noted that many (typically new) users do not understand the rules of their chosen methods – and thus engage in unprotected sex at risky times in their cycles – and that pointing out incorrect implementation of FAM is important so they do not become pregnant. “I get frustrated with having to repeat some *very* basic information,” she said. “Namely, asking people if they have chosen a method to follow and responding when they say “what’s a method?” – you literally cannot effectively practice FAM without following the rules of a method. This is what frustrates me but also makes me feel like I need to be there, so people learn how to use FAM properly.”11 

Despite issues that occasionally arise through use of Kindara, all the women I interviewed – and many other users in their charts themselves – indicated that they find their use of the app to be gratifying. “I think that the Kindara community is overall more polite and helpful because it is made up of people who all have similar goals,” said Natasha. “I’ve seen countless comments from women saying that they are so thankful that they have this profound knowledge of their cycles and that they are thankful for finding this community. It seems that gratitude for the knowledge of our bodies and for the app itself is what encourages people to be polite, kind and helpful.”12 Kindara allows women from a variety of backgrounds to come together over a common goal – an understanding and appreciation of their bodies – to provide one another with support, encouragement, and knowledge, and to form a community that unites women across age, religion, politics, and circumstance.

*All names changed to maintain confidentiality.

**The term “heart” on Kindara refers to sexual intercourse (both protected and unprotected), referring to the heart symbol used to mark sex on the app (an outlined heart represents sex with a condom or diaphragm and a filled in heart represents unprotected sex). “CD” stands for “cycle day,” or the day of the menstrual cycle a woman is on (the first day of the period is CD 1).

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Endnotes:

  1. Lisa Hendrickson-Jack, The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility (n.p.: Fertility Friday Publishing Inc., 2019).
  2. Toni Weschler, MPH, Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). 
  3. Weschler, Taking Charge of Your Fertility. 
  4. “Fertility and Period Tracking App for iPhone and Android | Kindara,” Kindara App, Kindara, n.d. https://www.kindara.com/products/kindara-app 
  5. Username withheld for privacy, “Can anyone offer their opinion on my level of risk?…,” Kindara, November 2, 2019.
  6. Username withheld for privacy, “I was just hoping to get some input on an ovarian cyst….,” Kindara, July 30, 2019.
  7. Heather (name changed for privacy), email message to author, March 5, 2020.
  8. Heather, email message to author, March 5, 2020.
  9. Allison (name changed for privacy), email message to author, March 13, 2020.
  10. Natasha (name changed for privacy), email message to author, March 5, 2020.
  11. Heather, email message to author, March 5, 2020.
  12. Natasha, email message to author, March 5, 2020.
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Assignment 2: Media Diary

While collecting data for my media diary, I was struck by the realization that more often than not, I’m consuming media while I’m doing something else – eating dinner, washing the dishes, walking to class. Even more, I noticed that I’ll often consume media while I’m consuming another type of media. This chart reflects the myriad ways I like to consume media, often concurrently. The numbers below the media reflect the total hours spent consuming/producing that type of media for the week, and the lines and arrows reflect the activities I most caught myself performing while being mediated.