UX Case Study: Untangling the Expansive Web of Podcasts
Creating a Responsive Website to Better Serve Podcast Listeners
Overview
We approached this project from a much different position as the last. While our work on the Slack app was focused on new features for a well established product in a heavily defined space, we were initially asked to identify a potential problem and target audience related to entertainment. We would address this problem with a responsive design for a new website. After an extensive topic map weaved us through far ranging choices, we landed on the ever-expanding world of podcasts, and their listeners who are challenged to keep up.
Responsibilities
I worked in a team with Andy Zheng, Grayson Doub, and Jonathan Lutz. While we generally shared each step equally, we each were responsible for the oversight of one of the four stages of the double-diamond design process. I headed research synthesis, and also took the lead on the design of our final presentation.
Problem Space
There has been a surge in podcast popularity in recent years, and as a response, the number of shows, listening platforms, and granularity of topics, has grown exponentially.
Users
This shift has left the diverse population of podcast listeners with a need to track available listening options and content without the framework that is entrenched in other entertainment sectors (e.g. film, television, etc.) to guide consumer choices. With this in mind, we approached the project asking how we could supply listeners with content that matched their specific needs by leveraging the collective experiences of a community of listeners.
Scope and Constraints
We were given a limited time frame of September 5th to September 17th, 2019, with no funding, and both our team and research and testing participants needed to be based in New York City.
Process
We followed the traditional double-diamond design process, relying heavily on user research and multiple iterations of usability testing.
Research
Since we were again dealing with a restricted time frame, we wanted to make sure that our user research was not skewed by the fairly random selection of participants that we used in our previous project.
For this reason, we started by creating an online survey that could screen participants on the frequency, nature, and intensity of their interactions with podcasts. We expected that while sporadic listeners might need information on podcasts, they might not carry the needs or concerns that a more dedicated listener might exhibit. However, we felt that some variance would be important to understand the impact of frequency on needs and preferences. Therefore we only screened out participants initially that had not listened to a podcast in the past 6 months.
This led to 6 in-person interviews with users that ranged in weekly listening between less than 1 hour to over 10 hours. We went into the interviews with 6 focused behavioral questions and clear plan to build the conversation out with careful follow up questions. We limited our planned questions to make sure we were not bringing too much bias into the interviews, preferring instead to let the participants drive the conversation.
Research Synthesis
Using this approach, we were able to collect a range of responses that we synthesized through 3 iterations of affinity mapping to identify specific trends. That process left us with 4 key insights, finding that when choosing a podcast, our participants generally want to find content that:
- Changes or supports their mood
- Fits wholly within their available listening time
- Distracts from, enhances, or complements their activity while listening
- Allow them to communicate better around current events and other relevant topics.
We brought these insights to life by channeling them into a primary persona that could focus our group efforts in the next stages, and help reduce bias from our own perspectives. This led to Josh, a young professional and father who is limited on time to find podcasts, but depends on the listening experience for motivation and variety in his life, as well simply being able to feel smart around those that he perceives as more educated.
We brought Josh’s goals, pains, and needs to life through journey mapping, and this brought us to the question of whether it was possible and viable to help a user like Josh. We were able to validate podcast listeners as an audience of need, but for different reasons than what we initially considered. Rather than being concerned with understanding the quality of available shows, listeners were more concerned with how the content could fit into their daily lives, and lead to the lives they wanted.
Design
While we all agreed that it made sense to forge ahead in this problem space, we needed to reach a consensus on the solutions. Our direction depended heavily on whether we would position ourselves as a podcast listening platform, or simply an informative site. After working through a MoSCoW map and feature prioritization matrix, we ultimately decided that we needed to be a listening platform in order to properly address the needs of our target market. Drawing from our research, we were concerned that someone like Josh would not want to devote time to a website he would need to leave to play the podcast, no matter how accurate the information was. Furthermore, we were worried that our accuracy would be at risk without direct listener data. Essentially, if we did not convert to a listening platform, we would fail to address the needs of Josh and our users.
Taking our features into a design studio, we began to visualize the interaction between features. We were able to quickly create a mid-fidelity prototype, using Sketch and InVision. We wanted to dive into usability testing as early as possible to understand how intuitive our vision would be for real users. Conducting 5 in-person usability tests, we were pleased to learn that while there were small aspects of the design and copy that could be refined and clarified, users fully understood the intentions of our site.
This gave us the validation and data to move to high-fidelity prototypes for both the mobile and desktop experiences. We named our site Podigy, and began building more around a brand. We focused on clarifying our descriptions and laying out features in ways that allowed for high learnability. Running our prototype through another 5 usability tests, we saw that while we were introducing features that were not expected by users, the website still succeeded in guiding them through the learning process.
Mobile prototype: https://invis.io/GUTY2TZXHAW#/384144389_Dunk_Profile_Selected_Overlay_Screen
Desktop prototype:
https://invis.io/SFTXWZ632YH#/383991161_Home_Page
Outcomes and Next Steps
While this took us to the end of our time with the project, and some minor enhancements were available, we concluded that Podigy was a viable and important solution in the podcast landscape. Though many listening platforms exist, we can more seamlessly align the process of choosing podcasts with the pulse of our listeners’ daily lives.
