Nas | Red Podcast

Exploring the podcast app with mood-based generated content and live-transcripts to help hard of hearing users.

Overview

My objective in this exploration was to design a podcast app that would differentiate itself from others by offering unique and engaging features that cater to users' preferences and needs. Specifically, aimed to provide users with a personalized listening experience that includes mood-based content recommendations, live event podcasts, personalized recommendations, offline listening, and podcast transcripts for hard of hearing users. Why do this exploratory design? This activity is done when I have free time to train my sensitivity to trends that are rising in society and train the assumptions of the ideas I have by conducting a series of research to validate these assumptions and ideas. Whether my ideas and assumptions are right and in accordance with the needs or desires of the application users or vice versa, which will then be presented in a final visual, which is result of this exploration.

My Role

UX Research, UI Designer and Creative Direction

Research

To gain a better understanding of users' podcast listening habits and preferences, I conducted research that included unstructured research combined with market research, generative problem questions, and competitive analysis. The research helped me identify users' pain points and needs, which informed my design decisions.

1. Unstructured and Market Research

Through researching the market, I am expecting to learn about the current state of the sector and how it is expected to evolve in the future. Especially in terms of demographics. From this research, I can find out if the product (exploration) I'm working on is still relevant for the next few years? and how the market (users) have reacted to the podcast in the last few years to its forecast for the next few years.

2. Competitive Analysis

I identify the strengths and weaknesses in terms of usability, user experience, and design from existing design from other platform. This analysis can help to improve the designs and create a better user experience. There are 3 apps that I analysed; Apple, Spotify and Noice (from Indonesia - local player). These are the most popular audio streaming (podcast) apps in Indonesia.

From the competitive analysis I got several Key Takeaways:

All three podcast apps have simple and intuitive designs, making it easy for users to navigate and find the content they want.
Personalized recommendations and easy discovery of new podcasts are key features in all three apps, helping users discover new content based on their interests.
Downloading for offline listening and variable playback speed are popular features across all three apps, making it easier for users to consume content on their own terms.
Cross-device syncing allows users to seamlessly transition between devices, and is available in all three apps.
Noice's access to exclusive content and high-quality audio streaming provide unique benefits for users compared to Apple and Spotify.

3. Other Research

To assist and support the findings from the market research and competitive analysis, I also conducted Generative Questions to find follow-up actions from the previous research. Generative Questions is to find the issues that have been obtained from the research results and then look for answers or motivation to make improvements. In my case, I generated two questions:

1. What motivates people to listen to audio streaming (podcast)? How can we design an app that supports and enhances these motivations?

2. What features or design elements of existing apps or other new extreme ideas are most appealing and valuable to users, and how can build on or improve these features to create a better user experience?

Design Process

Based on the research I did for this exploration, there are 4 main features that at least an app should have which are Mood-based content, personalization, podcast conversation transcripts, offline listening and finally live events.

1. Define Scenarios

Scenarios are created to help comprehend the interactions that will actually happen within the app. This makes determining which portions require design easier. I made at least four scenarios to help me envision the scenarios of how the users may use the app.

2. Develop Wireframe

After creating the scenarios. I developed wireframes to ensure that the scenarios made sense with the feature requirements that had been determined earlier. It also helps me find the interactions flow and foundation of what components and designs I will create later.

Final Design

Here are the designs of the main features that I propose from this exploration of the Red Podcast mobile app.

Onboarding Screens and Mood-Based

Users are asked select content based on their interests on the onboarding page. This will allow the system to deliver more relevant recommendations and display more relevant information. As well as, after select their content preferences, users also can select content based on their current mood. Mood-based content will have a dedicated section at the top after system content recommendation.

Homepage

Transcript Feature

The app has ability to provide transcript of the conversation/talk of the podcast creator. Why not just use closed captions? Well, closed captions are more appropriate for audio-video content where users can carefully see the visuals (objects) in the content, whereas for podcasts which are audio-only, it might be difficult to follow. So I chose transcript to provide a clear flow for users, especially with hearing impairment to enjoy the podcast. The application is the same as someone reading a book, person singing while read the lyric, or like a newsreader reading a prompter.

Live Event

The app allow users to join the live streaming when the podcaster held a live event. Or users can easily create their event with other user and share the event link to other to join the event whereby they can chit-chat each other.

Conclusions

With mood-based content suggestions, live event podcasts, personalized recommendations, offline listening, and podcast transcripts, the app gave users a personalized listening experience that maybe will meet their needs and preferences.

However, I'm doing this project out of my own curiosity. Although, I did my fair share of research and analysis during its creation. Much of what I've assumed and proposed is based on my own biases and opinions. And I really do hope this helps you out in some way.