Small Change
It may seem like a small change, but Spotify's removal of the Heart button is a bigger deal than they let on. A change that rolled out to most users in early 2023, the familiar Heart button was replaced with a Plus icon that changes to a filled in checkmark icon when selected. Apparently, the focus was "to consolidate the total number of buttons available on the app". But it didn't seem cluttered before?? Huh. Interesting.
False Claim
While my phone and personal computer desktop apps have all updated to the heartless design, my work computer has held onto its hearts, and boy am I glad it did! Firstly, the claim that removing the Heart icon reduces the total number of buttons available seems a bit farcical to me – on my older version of the app, there is no plus or add button next to the Heart icon for favouriting. Any time I want more options for a song, album or anything else, I've still got to access the "More Options" menu. The updated look is no less cluttered, just a little bit different... a little more... heartless.
Why Heart Matters
I get that Spotify has done user testing with this updated functionality, but did they hit their mark? I don't think so. I just mentioned needing to use the "More Options" menu to add my selection to a playlist, and I haven't seen that set of action change with the introduction of the Plus. In fact, I was quite confused by what they meant by the Plus "...allows you to add songs to multiple playlists at the same time." SO. About that. It was only when I was reading an article from Screen Rant for this video that I found you tap on the already checked icon to add to the playlist from there??? I totally missed that memo, and nothing about operating the app makes me think to do that naturally!
It's only sort of intuitive only if you know.
So you have a song you already favourited (or plussed? Checked? You tap the green check to pull up the add-to-playlist option, ok cool that is pretty quick. Glad I read an article about it more than a year after the fact to find out. Have a song you haven't plussed yet? Nahhh okay we're sticking with favourited 'cause that just sounds better. Do they still call it that?? -Ahem- So you have a song you haven't favourited yet and you go to tap the same space where you see the green check should show up (there's no plus icon there on mobile) and instead of favouriting the song, it just starts playing... hmmmmm. Still need the "More Options" menu for that!
BUT IT GETS WORSE
So that cool new "add your favourited songs to a playlist but not the songs you haven't favourited yet" feature you just learned about should work for albums too right?... I tap the green check as finally know to add the album to a playlist and... IT REMOVES IT FROM MY LIBRARY INSTEAD. What?? So the same icon has different functionality, even on the same page and in close proximity to each other??? That is terrible UX design! I just learned a new trick to engage with the UI and it doesn't even apply to the same icon in a different spot... just, like. Ugh!
