Digital experience · Information Architecture
Product Controls or Streaming Hub? Resolving the B&W App's IA Tension
The Problem
A Product With Two Competing Purposes
The B&W Music App serves two distinct functions. The first is a product controller — managing ANC modes, EQ, device connections, firmware, and headphone settings across the Px7 S3, Px8 S2, and Pi8. The second is a streaming music hub — integrating services like Tidal, Amazon Music, Qobuz and Tunein, providing a home page with personalised recommendations.
These two purposes are not necessarily the same hierarchy. How they are weighted relative to each other has implications for navigation structure, home screen design, and onboarding priority. The question this case study investigates is: what does actual usage data tell us about which surface users engage with more — and what that suggests for where the app's IA places its emphasis?
Do B&W users engage with the app primarily to control their headphones, or to listen to music through it?
The answer shapes navigation hierarchy, home screen design, and onboarding priority — making it worth examining carefully before investing in either direction.
Approach
The Research Journey — Four Phases, Four Reasons
Rather than starting from the analytics, the investigation was built outside-in: first what customers say in the wild, then how they think, then what breaks for them, and only then what the behavioural data shows. Each phase was chosen for a specific reason, and each fed the next.
01 · Product reviews
Why: product sales channels are a rich source of unprompted feedback. They focus mainly on hardware — but occasionally touch on the app, and those mentions reveal where the app sits in the overall product experience. 2,374 retail reviews plus 3,220 app store reviews were analysed.
02 · Card sorting
Why: mental models. For an app that combines streaming and product controls, I needed to understand how natural categorisation works for users — to validate assumptions about the existing nav structure and uncover patterns. Planned and led the activity together with the UX designer.
03 · Customer support tickets
Why: support tickets surface the biggest pain points — people contact support because something matters enough to fix. 1,762 Px7 S3 tickets (AI-categorised into 164 categories) gave a measure of the overall weight of each topic.
04 · Dashboard analytics
Why: to understand the most-used parts of the app — product controls and streaming-service interaction counts. Ten behavioural signals across every major surface, over a 6-month window (Dec '25 – May '26).
Phase 01 · Product Reviews
Loved Hardware, Resented App
The journey started in the sales channels. Retail reviews focus mainly on the hardware — but where they touch the app, the tone shifts sharply. The B&W Music App averages 2.10★ across 3,220 direct app store reviews, compared to 4.49★ for the hardware across 2,374 retail product reviews. App store reviews skew toward users who had something to report, and the dataset spans 2021–2026 so some older complaints may already be addressed. But the gap set the agenda for everything that followed: the app, not the hardware, is where the experience breaks.
Phase 02 · Card Sorting
Mapping Mental Models — Users Restructured the App
Reviews told us where the pain was; they couldn't tell us how users think. For an app that combines two fundamentally different jobs — controlling a physical product and browsing streaming services — the existing navigation embeds assumptions about how those jobs relate. I planned and led two card sorting studies together with the UX designer to test those assumptions. Study one was an open sort to surface the natural categories; study two (April 2026) was a hybrid sort with 15 participants (13 valid) designed to re-validate the first study's findings and stress-test whether a three-tab model — Home / Library / Settings — holds at scale. Participants could create their own categories, including "I don't need this."
* ANC settings split between Home (47%) and Settings (40%) in round one — the one card users wanted in two places at once.
Search lost its tab
No participant kept Search as a top-level destination. 67% placed it in Library and 33% in Home — an action inside the music space, not a place of its own. The current four-tab structure dedicates 25% of the nav to something users see as a feature of the music area.
Home was decluttered
Participants kept Home minimal: notification inbox (67% in round two), paired devices (47%), ANC (47%), and service linking (47%). Editorial and discovery cards moved out — recommendations split between Home (53%) and Library (47%), and brand-discovery content went to "I don't need this."
A rejection pile emerged
Given the option, participants used "I don't need this" deliberately: brand exploration was flagged by 4 of 13 in study two ("I'd already decided what kind of headphones I want"), legal documents by 3 of 13 ("just kind of adds bloat"). Cross-sell content triggered active aversion — "if you put ads in an app like this, you're gonna lose me pretty quickly."
Frequency drives Home, not function
The dominant mental model behind the contested cards — ANC (Home 47% / Settings 40%), quick-adjust (60/40), EQ (40/33), paired devices (47/40): Home = anything I touch every day; Settings = anything I configure once and never reopen. High-frequency controls kept drifting out of Settings into Home regardless of what they "are."
Three tabs feels too few
Unprompted, 4 of 13 vocal participants in study two invented a fourth tab — "Help," "Device Settings," "My Account," an "About" section — to relieve an overloaded Settings. The current Settings holds 20 items; participants kept trying to break it apart.
Library = streaming surface
Participants mapped Library to Spotify / Apple Music conventions — playlists, search, recommendations, podcasts, browsing. "Things I already have" landed cleanly; "discover" sometimes leaked to Home. The takeaway: don't fight the streaming-app mental model users already carry.
Study two confirmed study one's headline: Settings is overloaded, Home is under-used, and high-frequency controls (ANC, EQ, paired devices) belong on Home or in a quick-settings drawer. Three tabs is the actual problem — participants invented a fourth tab but named it differently each time ("Help," "Device Settings," "My Account"); what the fourth tab should actually be only became clear in the dashboard phase. Library should mirror streaming-app conventions rather than fight them. Cross-sell content damages trust and should sit behind explicit opt-in. And users sort by "do I touch this daily," not by category — frequency beats function. That gave us a structural hypothesis to test against behavioural data: if controls anchor the mental model, usage should split the same way. The support tickets and dashboard sized it.
Phase 03 · Support Tickets
Weighing the Pain: Controls Lead by a Wide Margin
Support tickets capture the biggest pain points — people contact support because something matters enough to fix. 1,762 Px7 S3 customer support tickets, AI-categorised into 164 issue categories, gave a measure of the overall weight of each topic. Product controls and app functionality account for 524 tickets (30%). Streaming-specific issues account for 12 (0.7%).
Streaming Model Clarity: A Small but Instructive Signal
Within the 12 streaming tickets, one is worth noting for what it suggests about IA legibility. A user's tracks were playing for only 30 seconds. The support agent explained that the app does not offer streaming services — the user had cancelled their subscriptions and didn't understand the dependency. A separate ticket asks whether Spotify will be available "soon."
Surfacing the streaming model clearly at the point of entry — which services are supported, and that an active subscription is required — would reduce this category of confusion. Something as simple as "Connect your Tidal, Qobuz or Amazon Music account" communicates the dependency before users encounter it mid-session. Spotify's absence should be stated upfront, not discovered.
Phase 04 · Dashboard Analytics
Sizing the Domains: What the Behavioural Data Shows
The final phase put numbers on everything the previous three suggested. To understand the most-used parts of the app, ten behavioural signals were analysed across every major surface — product control interactions and streaming-service interaction counts — over a 6-month window. Four findings emerged.
Charts are redrawn from the analytics dashboard and are illustrative of scale and trend rather than exact values.
Dashboard · Finding 01
Product Controls Dominate — by a Factor of 3×
When all control-side interactions are summed, the app's product control surfaces generate over 1.4 million interactions per month. Total streaming engagement runs at roughly 500k per month. Controls account for around 74% of all recorded app interactions, with streaming accounting for the remaining 26%.
Combined monthly interactions, Dec '25 – May '26 average. Control-side: ANC (QAP + Settings) + EQ + headphone connections. Streaming-side: browse plays + homepage interactions + search selections.
ANC controls, EQ, and device connection generate significantly more interactions than streaming. An IA that positions these behind a music-first home screen may be misaligned with how the majority of users are currently engaging with the app. The Quick Access Panel pattern — surfacing controls immediately — appears well-suited to the observed usage profile.
Dashboard · Finding 02
Streaming Is Used — But Not for Discovery
Streaming interactions are real and substantial at ~500k/month. But the nature of that engagement matters as much as the volume. Users are not using B&W's streaming hub to find new music — they are using it to continue what they were already listening to. The home page functions as a "resume" button, not a discovery surface.
The streaming surface's job in the IA appears to be providing a convenient path back to content users already know. Discovery modules receive comparatively little engagement — which may suggest deprioritising or repositioning them, though further research into their placement and visibility would be useful before drawing firm conclusions.
Dashboard · Finding 03
Two Distinct User Profiles Within the Streaming Surface
Search behaviour reveals that not all streaming users are alike. Browse plays and search selections show different service distributions — pointing to two separate user profiles with different needs and different IA requirements within the streaming layer.
The IA does not need to choose between these two profiles — but designing the default state for the Returner (fast access to controls + recentplay) while keeping the Audiophile Seeker's path to EQ and search short would serve both. A tiered navigation structure — controls first, curated streaming secondary — appears well-matched to the observed usage split.
Dashboard · Finding 04
A Sharp Usage Decline — and the Controls–Streaming Relationship
Overall app usage declined significantly between April and May 2026. The steepness of the drop — particularly on the Settings surface — suggests a specific event may be involved: a firmware update, a compatibility issue, or an app store release. What the data does show is the relationship between the two surfaces when usage drops: controls and streaming fall together, with controls leading.
Card sorting showed participants reaching for a fourth tab without agreeing on what it was. The dashboard answered it: Settings is the highest-interacted surface in the app, and the bulk of that traffic is product management — device info, connections, renaming, adding and removing products. Users can own multiple speakers and headphones, just headphones, or just speakers — which points to a dedicated Devices tab: a product listing showing all owned products, separating "manage my products" from app-level settings.
Of 125 critical product reviews (1–3★) over the trailing 12 months, the top complaints are Bluetooth/connectivity (39), firmware failure (10), app compatibility (9), and customer service (13). Streaming-related complaints total 1 in the same window. Product reviews also show negativity rising to 29% in March 2026 — approximately one month before the usage decline in the data.
Recommendation
The IA Hierarchy the Data Supports
Taken together, the four research phases suggest a three-layer hierarchy, delivered through a four-tab navigation: Home / Library / Devices / Settings. Devices is the tab card sorting asked for and the dashboard named — a product listing for every owned speaker and headphone, pulling product management out of an overloaded Settings. Reviews, mental models, support weight and behavioural data all point consistently in the same direction, though the right balance would benefit from further user testing to validate.
This hierarchy does not deprioritise streaming as a feature — it deprioritises the current home screen's over-investment in discovery modules that users have already demonstrated they do not engage with. B&W's streaming integration is real and valuable; it just belongs in the second and third layer, not the first.
Concept · Wireframes
The Four-Tab IA, Sketched
Early wireframes translating the hierarchy into screens. Each surface is zoned by priority — what the research says users touch most sits highest. The bottom navigation carries the four tabs the studies converged on: Home / Library / Devices / Settings.
1st priority
2nd priority
3rd priority
1st priority
2nd priority
(subscription required)
3rd priority
1st priority
2nd priority
3rd priority
4th priority
App-level only
Home Adapts to What You Own
Because ownership varies — multiple speakers and headphones, just headphones, or just speakers — Home is composed per ownership profile rather than fixed. The hierarchy stays the same; the first-priority zone changes.
Headphones only
The first section is all about the product itself: connection status, battery, ANC, EQ, Spatial Audio, and Multipoint, with a clear route into the full controls screen.Streaming comes next.
Speakers only
The structure stays the same, but the controls adapt to the product. Users see speaker status, EQ, and a link to additional controls. Features that don't apply, like ANC or Multipoint, simply aren't shown. Streaming remains second, with playlists and content third.
Headphones + speakers
For users with multiple products, the primary headphone card appears first, including ANC, Multipoint, and access to full controls. Additional products sit one swipe away in a card stack. Streaming remains second, followed by playlists and content.
Why it works
The layout is based on what people use most, not how features are grouped internally. The controls users interact with every day are always first. Streaming comes next, as the second most common activity, while playlists and editorial content sit further down the page. The result is a homepage that changes depending on what products a user owns, while keeping a familiar structure and prioritising the actions people use most often.
Three Decisions Layered on Top
A global quick-settings drawer
ANC split Home (47%) / Settings (40%) in card sorting — users want it in two places at once. Rather than picking a side, ANC / EQ / connection live in a pull-down drawer reachable from any tab. The dashboard already validates the pattern: the QAP path beats the Settings path 6:1 for connections.
Cross-sell that feels relevant
Both studies showed that "Discover other products" was perceived as promotional and reduced trust, so we removed shopping as a primary destination. Instead, accessory recommendations appear within the context of products users already own. Empty states in Devices provide a more relevant way to introduce the wider ecosystem. For example, someone who only owns headphones might see an invitation to add a speaker, but only when it's contextually relevant and entirely optional.
Setting expectations around streaming
The support tickets showed users discovering mid-session that the app streams nothing itself — 30-second clips after a cancelled subscription, Spotify expected but absent. The link-service tile names the supported services and the subscription requirement at the point of entry, not after. This approach helps users understand that the app is a streaming gateway rather than a content provider.
Validating the structure
The next step is to tree-test the proposed four-tab architecture against the current three-tab structure and compare behaviour after launch against the Dec '25–Jun '26 baseline. Success would look like key controls being accessed more naturally through Home and Devices rather than Settings, alongside improvements in overall app satisfaction and a narrower gap between app ratings and the hardware's 4.49★ rating.
Reflection