Redesigning Podcasts

A Streamlined Listening Experience

Podcast listeners use a wide range of applications to discover new shows and listen to their favorites based on different features.

Why don’t users leverage the native application for podcast listening? What makes other apps more attractive?

Speaking to friends and fellow podcast fans, I noticed that folks were usually downloading third party applications rather than employing the built-in podcasting app, and I wanted to know why.

Digging Deeper

Excited that I had an idea for my first UX case study, I took a step back and decided to look at some app reviews and validated my idea before diving into more detailed research. I found that folks who were reviewing Apple podcasts had similar issues with the app and were consistently switching to third party applications.

Surveying Real Listeners

Now that I had my idea and some basic support, I decided to run a survey to find people for interviews and gather more info about which apps they liked and what features mattered to them. Since I didn't have any paid survey tools, I just used a Google Form and asked folks in a Facebook group to join in.

Turns out, most folks with Apple phones stuck to the built-in app. But among those under 35, more of them preferred apps like Spotify. These younger users told me that the top things they cared about were being able to search for specific episodes and making playlists to choose the order of their shows.

Talking to Users

To gather more detailed, qualitative feedback, I reached out to members of a podcasting fan page to recruit participants for short interviews. I targeted users under the age of 35 who used iPhones as their primary mode of listening to podcasts.

I spoke to four people about their listening habits, the features they used, and what they wish they could do with their podcatcher apps.

Defining the Problem

After the interviews, a few themes emerged in what I heard from these young podcast listeners. In order to address the two major feature gaps that I identified through the interviews and the survey, I developed two job stories that targeted what users really wanted from their podcatcher.

The first of these addressed functionality surrounding playlist creation:

When I’m going to be doing an activity where I can’t use my hands, I want to be able to create a playlist so that I can choose what I will be listening to.

The second addressed functionality surrounding selecting a specific episode:

When I’m trying to introduce my friend to a podcast, I want to be able to find a specific episode that I think they’ll enjoy.

Testing Podcasts

Equipped with my job stories, I devloped a simple usability test that involved two tasks:

  1. Participants were directed to search for a particular episode within a show and add it to their queue.

  2. Participants were asked to customize their queued playlist by changing the episode order.

I conducted the test with four participants, and identified the following common pain points:

  • Users didn’t realize that they had to scroll down through search results to find a list of episodes. They usually stopped at “Shows” at the top of the results. Instead, they would go into a particular show and scroll until they found the episode, which was tedious and frustrating.

  • Users didn’t recognize “Play Next” as the way to add an episode to the queue, and instead expected it to be labelled as “Add to Playlist” or “Add to Queue”.

  • Users could not find where to view the queue in the application, and instead thought that “Up Next” or “Listen Now” would bring them to the current location.

Ideating & Prototyping

Having identified the pain points in the user experience, I ideated on potential solutions to those issues, pulling inspiration from other applications and suggestions that my users had made. I then drew out some Lo-Fi mockups and got feedback from some additional users before creating clickable prototypes in Figma (see below).

More Testing & Results

I tested the clickable prototypes with four new users, using the same tasks. Using the new UI, all users were able to successfully complete the tasks with minimal frustration.

Reflections on a First Case Study

The exercise of conducting this first case study gave me an opportunity to use a variety of UX research and design methods, and practice applying the skills I had gained as an anthropologist to a different context.

Were I to do it over again, I would change a few things about my methods and process:

  • I would conduct interviews first and then use the survey to validate my findings.

  • I would conduct the first round of usability tests on the existing app using a clickable prototype rather than the actual app to ensure consistency.

  • I would find users that had the same level of familiarity with the Apple Podcasts app to reduce bias and user error resulting from a lack of knowledge about the existing UI.

Overall, this case study left space for my passion for podcasts and my interest in UX to coalesce into a fun project that allowed me to both flex my existing research muscles and refine my skills in traditional UX methods, solidifying my decision to dive into the world of user experience and technology.

* Note: Neither this project nor myself are affiliated with Apple in any way. I was simply looking to conduct a first UX case study for my portfolio, and I love podcasts!