Humanise Music : How can design bring emotions to the center of music consumption?

Sammanfattning: In today’s world music streaming is the most dominant form of music consumption. Introducing platform capitalism to music streaming has changed the music commodity and its effects serve as a motivation for this thesis. The role of emotions in music listening is explored and design research is conducted to find unmet latent needs of users in respect to the emotional side of music.  Semi-structured user interviews are used to understand how users relate music to their emotional lives. Co-design workshops are conducted to identify unmet user needs and feelings. The data is analysed inductively and results treated through the theoretical lenses of emotional design (Norman D. (2003)) and psychological ownership theory (Pierce J.L., Kostova T., & Dirks K. Y., (2003)). The main themes generated by the research show that users want -- to know their music and their music service to know them; new ways to feel music, relive the “first time”; to connect music to their emotional and personal lives; to control music more easily. These findings motivate and inform the design of a conceptual artefact.