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Liz Kucharska

Sr.product designer
+ design coach

my AUDACY PODCASTS

As Audacy continues to remain competitive in the ever-shifting audio streaming universe, the team has worked on identifying some gaps in the UX compared to what other services were doing. One major area of interest Users mentioned was having a consolidated hub to view their favorite content. Currently, a user has to navigate across multiple areas of the app to view their Subscribed podcasts, see their Recent and Favorite stations, Continue listening to episodes, and catching latest updates in their Local area.

Because Audacy partnered with new Podcast studios and expanded their Podcast offerings significantly, the need to research and plan a more robust place to house a registered user's favorites grew. If a User was to subscribe to, download, view, and discover podcasts, they would have to go through some unintuitive interactions that weren't built for the growing Podcast library. 

Where:

Audacy

When:

2021

//PROCESS//

Problem: Limited Modules in admin

One of the other issues in Audacy's mobile app is the limited modules that are available in the admin. Historically, we have reused items that were available with the inability to create more flexible modules. This not only impacted the UX, but it also made it difficult for Audacy to amplify how we market content to users. In this concept, I wanted to show the team how much we can improve if we had different layouts to play with.

Examples:

  1.  Cards that serve as flexible content leads (Current leading sections are full-width banners which limit the layout possibilities)

  2. Latest Episode module that allows the user to Play, Download, Add to list, and read Details of Podcast Episodes

  3.  Unplayed Episodes with ability to add to "Save for Later" list

Consolidated personalized content

During user tests, multiple users said they would like all their stuff in one place especially as product offerings expand. It was worth validating the value of changing the structure of our bottom navigation to make better use of space savers and create a centralized place for user favorites. After speaking to the researcher on our team, we ran a  qualitative test on the current app flow, and identified these starting points:

  • Users' gut reaction was to have the Search tab directly initiate Search, or moving the Search icon to a different location

  • Users were unsure of the purpose / focus of the current Home tab. It included marketing modules, their Favorites, and duplicate content from the Explore tab

  • (Explore > Podcasts) served exactly the same content as (Podcasts > Discover) which was not useful for our Users and wasted space

  •  (Podcast > Subscriptions) left a lot to be desired as it was a basic list of In-Progress episodes and Downloaded Episodes, which could be more robust

Key Takeaways and Findings

1. Users feel the search function is too removed from the explore experience

Our researcher took this prototype and after conducting a qualitative analysis on UserTesting.com, here were some key findings:

While exploring the prototype, users were likely to feel that search was missing from the explore pages and something about a stand-alone search icon in the main nav was to be unappealing: 

Designs

The following changes were tested here:

  1. My Audacy Hub

  2. Additional modules

  3. Mini Player

  4. New Nav + overall app structure

  5. Moving Settings into top nav

  6. Friendly greeting message with user's first name in top nav

  7. My Podcasts: For You, Downloads, Subscriptions

User Flow: Find & Subscribe to a Podcast

Podcasts were a primary reason for this study, so in order to find more supporting data I have mapped out a user flow to identify the steps required in Finding and Subscribing to a podcast. This helped us see where some tasks might be simplified. 

We can see that there are multiple ways a user can stumble upon a podcast through banners, but steps could be saved by making Search more accessible outside without gating it under a 2nd tap inside the Explore tab.

My Stations & My Podcasts

This module could be used to easily toggle between a user's favorite Stations and Podcasts.

The assumed benefits of this would be:

  • Empty states to entice a user to create an account

  • Easily toggle between Stations and Podcasts

  • Ability to manage Downloads and Episodes in the Podcasts tab

  • View newest episodes from My Podcasts

Problem: No Mini-player

In addition to not having a larger selection of modules, upon conducting a competitive analysis it was clear we are missing a very common element that other audio platforms have: A mini player that's always accessible and interactable. This is a huge missed opportunity for better UX. In the current app, users have to tap on the Player tab to Pause, Stop, or Play a stream. Adding a mini player would significantly improve usability. The Player tab was completely omitted from the test nav, because...

ProposED SOLUTION:

New tab structure + Mini Player

Current Navigation

Home Tab

  • As mentioned previously, Home screen of current Audacy tab is ambiguous to users as a result of mix of marketing and personalized content

Explore Tab

  • Contains content discovery and search functions

  • Test Users mentioned it wasn't obvious that Audacy is an audio platform for Radio streaming since there is no clear focus on Stations in Nav

Player Tab

  • Main way to access the player

Podcast Tab

  • Does it's job OK for podcast discovery but is disjointed in terms of Subscribed + Favorited content

Settings

  • This tab is used infrequently by most users and does not require bottom Nav screen space which could be utilized for items that are used more frequently

Test Navigation

My Audacy tab

  • Replacing the Home tab with a clearly personalized "My Audacy" tab that contains all Favorites and Subscriptions

Search Tab

  • Immediately initiate global search function with filtering

Stations Tab

  • Used to discover Live and Rewind stations across all main station types (Sports, News & Talk, Music)

Podcasts Tab

  • Used to discover all Podcast content and serve recommendations based on User listening habits

You might be wondering where the Player tab went in this test version. Read on!

View Prototype

Curious about how it works? Take a look and poke around, you're more than welcome to!

“I know you have a search on the search [page] but on station and podcast I would have a little search icon, in case you wanted to search anything from there. I know I keep saying 'no duplication' but I feel like you almost don't need a search category, you can incorporate it into Stations and Podcasts..."

- Session A

"[On the Stations page] ... I might also want a search tool. I know that's in search and I could just go there, but maybe another search function included in here, in case I want to search really quickly, without having to hit back into search function, and I want to search specifically through stations.”

- Session B

“The other thing I don't like is the search. If I wanted to search this page [podcasts] I have to go to a specific tab. my instinct is to try search here, directly."

- Session C

"I like that they show me my recently played and favorites, so I have really quick access to what I want to get back to and listen again."

- Session A

"I like how recently played is at the top, that's probably how I want to pick up, from my dashboard.”

- Session B

“I do like that it's allowing me to continue where I left off, quite easily. However, the thing that worries me a bit is if I had a lot of them, this would be hard to go through."

- Session C

2. The "Continue Listening", "Recent Stations" and "Favorites" continue to be important to users; they liked it being front-and-center to their experience

Users continue to identify that resuming the content they were listening to, or getting back to what they like to hear as important to them, when opening an app like Audacy:

Conclusion & Next Steps

TBD

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