Heard.FM
🎨 My Role
UX Designer, UX Researcher
UX Designer (2), UI Designer, Business Analyst, Project Manager, Client (3)
🤽♀️ My Team
🕺 My Contributions
Wire Framing, Prototyping, Research, Information Architecture
🔧 My Tools
Adobe XD, draw.io
🕓 Timeline
2 month design sprint
Client Intro
Who is Tandon Productions?
Tandon Productions is a team of creators, writers, and producers. They write, cast, direct, produce, publish, and promote a variety of popular podcast series.
Problem #1: Podcast platforms are an endless shelf of content. Users are overwhelmed
Problem #2: Entertainment professionals are misallocation their time and energy to selling ad space
Problem #3: Major streaming platforms let listeners skip ads; unvalidated impressions are tough to sell
Problem #4: Listeners are inclined to skip advertisements, in part, due to lack of relevance
Problem statements
Project Goals
Empathy mapping
User Research
My team and I collected a bunch of data. This gave birth to our ideal user flow, a single thread of how we imagined the app would be used. I carried this forward, expanding this into an experience map, capturing the user thoughts at each behavior point. We sought to identify the points at which our product would differ from market-standard expectations.
Ideation
From here we decided which features were core to content discovery and the listening experience, and designed a navigation map around these hypotheses. We wanted to present the core product, with no added frills. The intent behind this decision was to create a seamless experience for our defined user personas by emphasizing a simplicity that implies the client's confidence in their curation and our suggestion algorithms.
Whiteboarding
Core to the value of our application is the quality of recommendations. For that reason, we decided to require users to volunteer their preferences. To convey the importance of these inputs we pulled this action forward on the journey, immediately after registration. When requesting any conscious behavior from first time users, the pressure is on. The window of “prove to me this is worth my energy” shrinks and it is quickly time to put up or shut up. We hypothesize that we can quickly convert their inputs into desirable outputs, earning trust and converting a higher rate of loyalists.
Differentiate through design
Design Intention #1
Curation
Our platform separates the signal from the noise. Endless libraries lead to endless scrolling; time spent scrolling provides no value to the user. User curiosity is complex to synthesize; we have built the foundation for an algorithm that augments the discovery process.
Design Intention #2
User-led journey
We collect user feedback in 4 ways. The 3 that require active input are: indicating user interests at onboarding, rating a podcast after listening, and engaging in our community forum. These actions require user work so our design intention is to display pay-off - if user spends effort training the system, they will save time in the long-term.
We also collect passive feedback, analyzing user behavior metrics. This requires no user effort and contributes to the strength of the system.
Discover content
Curation
Teamed with our algorithm writing, our designs focus on delivering high hit-rate content recommendations that get better and better each user session. The Home Screen is an exhibit of curation, rather than the endless shelf approach of many competitor marketplaces.
Build playlists
Playlists are a great tool for further user curation. Discover all the details of your favorite podcasts then select the episodes that pique your interest. Later, sit back, relax, and shuffle or play in-sequence your curation masterpiece. Want to share with others, or even collaborate on a joint playlist? Heard.FM breathes community into podcast consumption.
Listen up
Click play! We designed a tool to be invisible, paving the shortest path to the play button. Our overall goal was to let listeners listen, and upon that, we have delivered.
User-led journey
Active input
We were curious how to pull the air of curation forward to the first user session. We decided that all we had to do was ask! With a few clicks during onboarding our users can direct their own content journey.
Feedback
Feedback is crucial for our recommendation engine to function. I made the UX decision to force reviews, 1. to maximize feedback, and 2. to emphasize the role that users play in their own curation. Users can see the impact of their effort in real-time, each review will improve the recommendations presented on the main screen. Beyond user-to-system feedback, we also built a platform for peer-to-peer discord. Our forum enables user to forge community and share feedback visible to the creators, the platform and, the public.
Conclusion
17,000
Hours of content uploaded
88,000
Listening hours
Looking ahead
Two months post launch and Heard.FM is enjoying an expanding user-base. There is plenty more on the horizon for Heard.FM x TechAhead. The product lifecycle has done one full revolution and has landed back on my UX desk; topic of the day: algorithm logic. I am working to balance user, process and profit to deliver satisfaction and value across stakeholder groups. We have an aggressive plan for user feedback-led iteration. Not only will these insights feed our technical upgrades, but also, we plan to provide data-driven recommendations to the content creators that will guide the direction of their productions.
