What is the problem I am trying to solve?
I am an avid podcast listener and have started listening to a larger number of podcasts that delve in social, political and economic issues. I believe that there is a need for increased conversations around these topics and at the same time an easier way to discover new episodes or podcasts for users. This project focuses on researching and proposing a design to enable better podcasts discovery and to increase the conversations happening around the topics being covered.
Who are the users?
The two sets of users being investigated are individuals who love podcasts and want to have more discussions around them and individuals who are looking to start listening to podcasts and need better discovery.
What skills did I use?
This post focuses on literature review, persona development, user interviews and some early design techniques particularly wire frames.
Podcasts Demographics?
The first step in researching the requirements, I found existing research regarding the podcasts demographics focused on the US [1][2][3]. A recent study found that 21% of Americans above the age of 12 have heard a podcast within the last month. Diving deeper into these statistics one can see that 38% of podcast listeners in the US are between the ages of 18-34. This shows that younger individuals are more likely to listen to podcasts since only 28% of the US population above the age of 12 lies between the age group 18-34. Despite the higher skew towards the younger population, 34% of podcast listeners are between the ages of 35-54 whereas about 17% is 55+. This spread is a good indication of the age group demographics of the podcast listeners and shows that people from various age groups are listeners. Similarly looking at the demographics of the listeners, one can see the spread shown by podcast audience tends to follow the general US demographics. Also an interesting thing to note approximately 50% of listeners have a bachelor’s or higher degree.
Another important aspect to study is where people listen to podcasts. According to research conducted, half the listeners listen while at home. The next highest proportion of listeners listen in a car or while driving. Other common places include the gym, public transport and at work.
Persona Development
The following personas were developed using user interviews along with personal experience being an avid podcast listener. The images used for the persona where obtained from https://randomuser.me/photos
Persona 1: John(21 years old)
John is 21 years old university student. John loves to listen to podcasts during his commute (walking or bussing) to and from school and while driving. John has an extensive list of podcasts he follows but he is constantly looking to explore more shows or even more topics. John is extremely interested in podcasts such as Reveal which tend to focus on investigative journalism from topics ranging from the American prison system to the state of welfare in US etc. While listening to such podcasts, John wants to be able to find a place to have discussions about these topics with other listeners especially the ones that disagree with his point of view. Due to his interest in podcasts, John tends to listen to episodes over a longer period of time due to the short commute times in his daily routine.
Persona 2: Jane (50 years old)
Jane is 50 years old and is an occasional podcast listener. The podcast Serial caused her to start listening to some episodes. She commutes an hour each way to work throughout the week and she tends to listen to podcasts while on the bus or her car. She currently relies on her children to recommend new episodes or setup the podcast app on her phone. She is experienced using her phone but she does not read websites or forums like reddit or twitter and is having a hard time finding new podcasts to follow. She wants a simple application to listen to podcasts and an easy way to get recommendations for new shows or episodes.
Persona 3: Richard (21 years old)
Richard is a 21 year old student at the University of Waterloo. Unlike John, he is not overly interested in podcasts but enjoys and appreciates the medium. He listened to all episodes of Serial in quick succession and following that attempted to listen to technology focused podcasts but could not keep up with them. Richard is interested in the idea of listening to more shows but considers himself a completionist and thus needs the episodes to be short enough to consume on his daily commute. Apart from the length, he does not like the scheduled nature of the shows because he feels like he is building a backlog within his application and is unable to keep up with it making him demotivated. Name would enjoy listening to new shows based on not only his interests but also his willingness to commit a certain amount of time.
Persona 4: Sam (23 years old), Podcast listener and producer
Sam is not only an avid podcast listener but also a beginner producer producing his own podcast. Sam tends to listen to shows that are focused around new skills or news in general. Podcasts for Sam are a way to gain knowledge about new and different topics while doing mundane tasks like shopping or cooking. Sam relies on his friends for new recommendations but would like to find more podcasts that maybe talk about an opposing view on a certain topic. Sam tends to prefer short podcasts that can be finished in a single sitting and tends to finish all episodes for a given show before exploring new shows.
Results from Persona Development
By completing the exercise of developing personas and conducting user interviews I was able to include a diverse set of use cases during the design process. By completing the exercise, it was made clear that people are different and tend to see or listen to podcasts in a variety of different ways. Where someone like me tends to listen to large number of podcasts including longform podcasts, some individuals only prefer to listen to short podcasts or consider themselves to be completionist which comes with its own set of requirements. The largest takeaway from user research was the need to include customization in how the application behaved. This options should allow the user to mold their own experience in a manner where they feel comfortable and motivated to use the application.
One of the persona's is also based around a podcast producer but due to the focus being on building an application of listeners, the producer persona does not heavily influence the design aspects of the application. The exercise of building this persona and talking to a producer does help to cement the motivations behind starting a podcast. This helps to understand what the producers want the user to get out of the podcast which helps when designing an interface to show the user their work.
Early Design Wireframes
After conducting user interviews, persona development and research, I am focusing on designing a mobile podcast application focused majorly on improving discovery. The reason behind focusing on a mobile application is the large portion of podcast listeners listen to shows while on the go. During my research I decided to not focus on conversation around these shows because I believe that its more of a social problem to start discussion around polarizing topics between people with different ideologies. The first draft of potential wireframes is shown below. These wireframes focus more on the signup flow which allows customization according to the type of user which would impact the rest of the application.
Exploring Polished Wireframes
As I moved into exploring more polished wireframes, I start to try out different colour schemes. The first design as shown on the below, focused on a darker colour scheme with shades of black and blue being used around the interface. This was inspired by dark modes available in various iOS applications already such as Tweetbot, Overcast as shown in the same figure below the proposed design.
In order to evaluate the reaction to this colour scheme, I proposed this design to potential users. Based on user's feedback, the dark theme made the application feel less friendly and unappealing. With this feedback, I went back to potential researching colour pallets that could replace the the dark one. In order to choose a primary colour, I took inspiration from my favorite iOS application, Overcast. Overcast is another podcast application that feel friendly and inviting given my experience and its popularity on the platform. I chose a shade of orange as my primary colour and used an online tool called Paletton. Paletton allowed me to experiment with colour palates that could work given my choice of primary colour. The colour palate I chose is here. The reason behind choosing this colour palate was regarding the primary colour but also having shades of red to use as part of any destructive action in the application. This was done to ensure consistency for a large portion of software products where any action coloured red implies destructive action. The interface was redesigned using this new interface and a few screens are shown below.
From showcasing this design, I did receive positive feedback regarding the feel of the application. They felt this version was a lot more inviting. The one point I was made to reconsider was as to why I decided to use both icons and hint text in fields. I did not really have a great answer except existing design patterns I had seen in other applications. Besides this, I was initially planning to have user's select a persona when signing up which would alter the way the application worked. After talking to users, I realized that such a step would add unnecessary complexity and would require a large amount of training for the user to even be able to pick a persona. Another potential issue would be informing the user of the affects their choice would have. Due to this, I decided that these options would be better placed in a settings menu. The font currently being used in the design is the default font used in iOS devices. This was done for consistency but other options can be explored.
