UX Teardown of The Story Collider
I’m doing a 3 article series of UX teardowns of sites and apps I like, and providing possible solutions to issues I see.
Each article will cover 3–5 major points and solutions — comments are welcome!
The Story Collider
I use Story Collider at work a lot, when I need to listen to interesting stories to stave off office boredom. It is a wonderful site which lists stories as podcasts for everyone to listen to:
However, several aspects of the site makes it difficult for me to use it.
Issue 1: Pausing the Podcast
Often, when I’m listening to a podcast, my colleagues will interrupt me to speak to me about work.
Hence, I need to easily pause and play the podcast. However, its not straightforward to do so on the site.
For example, when I want to play a podcast, I can click anywhere within the picture to play it.
I can also click anywhere within the picture to pause it.
However, once it is paused, it goes to a SoundCloud screen, as you can see in the gif above. The first few times I encountered it, I panicked, trying to click on everything. Nothing was responsive, except for the big orange SoundCloud button and the picture.
When you click on that, however, you go straight to SoundCloud’s site.
As a user, however, this is very jarring, as I’m used to navigating StoryCollider’s site, and now the layout for all the podcasts have changed. I don’t want to be here! I just want to continue listening to my podcast!
Even worse, SoundCloud doesn’t remember where I stopped listening to my podcast. I have to restart from the beginning and try to click around to find out where I stopped.
Solution: Understandably, Soundcloud wants the sites using it to redirect traffic to their main site.
However, I would suggest that StoryCollider use another audio posting site that doesn’t hijack its listeners by ‘forcing’ them to go to their site in the midst of a podcast.
If SoundCloud must redirect the listeners, please let them continue listening from where they left off.
Issue 2: Uninterrupted Listening
As I work while listening to the podcast, I prefer to listen to a continuous stream of stories.
However, on the podcast page, I can only click one podcast at a time.
Picking a podcast here redirects to…
When the podcast ends, I will usually click the back button, or the podcast button to go back to the podcasts page to make my next selection.
After using the site for a long time though, I discovered a shortcut to the process.
If, at the end of the talk, you click on the picture, you get options!
Unfortunately, when you click on a new track, the only thing that refreshes is the podcast. As you can see, the title and synopsis of the talk is still the previous one. That really discourages me from using this option.
Solution: First, I will suggest that the other tracks appear right at the end of a video, instead of needing a click to activate it, so users are aware that they can navigate to a new talk directly.
Secondly, the talk title and synopsis has to change according to the new talk loaded.
On the other hand, a feature like youtube’s autoplay next video can be implemented.
This will make listening to the next talk completely hands free, and allow me to continue working while enjoying the next talk without any action on my part.
As I tend to revisit the site once a month, only when about 5–10 new talks have been uploaded, this will be a great option to easily listen to all of them straight.
Even better, I would prefer if a playlist of all the talks (like youtube has) is available on the home page.
This will allow me to select other talks and jump to those that interest me, after the current talk has ended… or is not my cup of tea.
Issue 3: Search box
Sometimes, I want to find a talk I liked to listen to it again.
However, when I type in a search entry in the search box, the text I typed is not visible.
Additionally, the display of the search results is laggy, and I usually think that an error has occured.
Attempting to delete the search entry by tapping the ‘esc’ key twice will also lead to squarespace’s site, which is impossible for me to navigate out of without refreshing the page. No close button anywhere!
Solution: I much rather have the search query text is visible with darker font color, and to switch off the responsive search display if it is so laggy.
It will help if the site disables the confusing re-direction to the squarespace site with ‘esc’ key, or offers a way to navigate out of it prominently. Close button, anyone?
Conclusion
Story Collider has kept my sanity during many endless work days, and kept my geek on for science and technology throughout the years. Really looking forward to watching Story Collider in person one day…
Meanwhile, I’m loving the monthly local version at Singapore Story Slam, which is always looking for speakers!
Heard they’re planning to do an R-rated show like Bawdy Storytelling soon, so if anyone wants to spill their long held secrets…you know where to go. ;)
As always, all comments on the article are welcome!
