[pedalpete]

Interesting idea, though I think I like it more on a broad friend sharing stream than all listening together. There doesn't seem to me to be a benefit of only having people in the same room.

You've also gone with a 'fair' way of playing users tracks, though as a group, you may have better luck with playing the tracks recommended by the most popular users.

As a user experience researcher, you should know that you'll have the majority of the users just as listeners, and a much smaller percentage who are actively building the playlists, so you'll have to account for that.

[vikasvadlapatla]

I had three types of music rooms in mind: location-based, genre-based, and friend/follower-based.

with respect to playing tracks by the most popular users, i think you've brought about an interesting point. I am currently working on a model where, at the end of every music "round", the most popular user is decided based on upvotes scheme and he/she gets to pick an additional song for the next round.. also allowing him to unlock badges and gain more credits! So far in my user interviews, people have liked this scheme and one of the user's mentioned that a sense of "competition" enhance the playlist and the listening experience.

The third point you made is particularly intriguing and something I hadn't thought about until now..But I am sure users would want to join the room just as listeners. In that case, either the control would automatically move to the next person in queue or it would switch to a computer generated playlist based on the previously played songs.

[petervandijck]

"So far in my user interviews, people have liked this scheme"

I'm sorry, but you're doing user experience research all wrong if you are asking them if they like your feature ideas.

[vikasvadlapatla]

Hi Peter, this question came about in my second round of user interviews.. I asked users about the applications they used on a day-day basis. 9 of the 12 users mentioned Foursquare in this list.

I asked them a follow-up question to judge what made them use foursquare on a daily basis. To my surprise, all users mentioned acquiring more badges as one of their main motives. Some also mentioned the Leaderboard.

This prompted me to further ask the users whether badges and leaderboards would motivate them to use an online radio. Although most of the responses I got were quantitative, I did get a lot of qualitative feedback as well. One of the users also added that he would love to be rated by fellow users (instead of the computer). This encouraged me to ask them about the upvotes, etc..

How would you recommend me asking the users about new features?

[petervandijck]

You shouldn't ask users if they would use feature X, their responses will be almost meaningless. You should ask users about problems they have etc., not about features.

http://fitzgeraldsteele.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/guerilla-re... “You never ask the question you really want answered. If you ask the question you want answered, you’ll miss all kinds of rich information.”

If you ask users if they want more features, or feature X, they'll almost always say yes. It doesn't mean anything.