8 Weeks
Personal / 2021
UX Designer
Mobile / UX / UI Design, User Research
The amount of monthly podcast consumers grew by 16% from 2019 to 2020, hitting an all-time high of 100 million Americans. (The Infinite Dial 2020). During the past two years, I consumed podcasts via the native Apple app and encountered many pain points myself. Investigating further, online community feedback revealed more of the same.
Users felt like Podcasts was overlooked and overshadowed by 3rd party alternatives (Overcasts and Pocket Casts) and was in dire need of an update. With the increasing number of monthly podcast listeners, it’s important to update Podcasts with features and usability to appease the userbase and give the 3rd party users an incentive to return. Here, my users are two groups: casual users and power users. Power users require a range of features to complement their heavy usage and casual users need an elegantly designed user experience.
The goals were to improve navigation, usability and implement features and do so while abiding by Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines to keep the look and feel of an Apple product. By looking at the competitive landscape, I saw what features and experiences the current Apple podcasts users are missing out on and implemented what users like from other apps. The outcome was a revamped experience with filters and search bars to enhance navigation that was lacking before and implementation of more advanced podcast listening features and improvement to usability by stronger signifiers.
With an increasing number of Apple users and podcast listeners, it is important to update Apple Podcasts with features and layout to both appease both power users and casual users. Power users need an incentive to return to the native Apple app above all, and casual users need a pleasant listening experience.
Deliver an efficient and pleasant user interface with updated visual and operational elements.
Propose changes that make users more comfortable while accessing podcasts.
Utilize Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for design direction to keep feeling of an Apple product.
UX/UI Design
User Research
The goal of this research was to gather insights, identify user pain points and pinpoint areas for improvement to develop a more positive user experience that addresses the needs and expectations of the user base.
After conducting user surveys, reading online user feedback and looking at the competitors, here were some problem areas of the current iteration of Podcasts.
Users still enjoyed the iOS design language, so I referenced Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines to maintain the look and feel of an Apple product.
Final Prototype
The redesign of the "Podcasts" app includes the addition of static search bars on all screens and a filter bar to allow users to quickly access and organize a show's library. The "My Episodes" was removed in favor of a standard list organized by chronological release to eliminate randomness. Users can utilize the filter categories to find new, unplayed and downloaded episodes.
The redesigned "Podcasts" app includes a range of features for power users, such as "Trim Silence" and "Voice Boost" for improving the listening experience. It also addresses a usability issue with the scroll bar, which previously faded after a short time, making it difficult for users to notice and access additional content. The updated app now includes a consistently present scroll bar.
In order to understand user needs and find actionable insights, I first utilized online user feedback and reviews and conducted user surveys. From these methods, many users mentioned switching to 3rd party apps as a result of their poor experiences with Apple Podcasts, which informed me to conduct a competitive analysis.
To quickly discover opinions and feedback from users about the app, I looked at online product reviews which immediately gave me actionable insights on design changes.
From initial user research, many users expressed frustrations with the native app and switched to third party apps. I conducted a study of Apple Podcasts' competitors: Overcast, Pocketcasts.
With a clear scope of the competitive landscape, I drew three insights from the information gathered.
01
Navigation. Many users found it difficult to find episodes for their shows, as the app made users go through many screens to find one.
02
Usability issues. Certain UI decisions in the original app made it difficult for users to efficiently and productively engage with their podcasts.
03
Lacking features. Especially amongst pro users, reliance on advanced features to allow for a more customized and improved listening experience was crucial.
While I was studying the other native Apple apps such as Messages, Notes, Calendar and referring to the Human Interface Guidelines, I noticed many common design conventions that Apple would use as their guideline for good UX but were oddly lacking in the Podcasts app itself.
The "Podcasts" app on iOS should include a search bar to allow users to easily search for episodes or shows within the app. This feature is present in other native iOS apps such as "Notes," "Messages," and "Contacts." A permanent search bar, rather than a hidden pull-down one, would make navigation easier and allow users to refresh the screen for updates with the extended pull-down gesture
The scroll bar in the original "Podcasts" app on iOS has low contrast and disappears when not in use, leading to many users not noticing it and not realizing that they can scroll down to access Episode Notes and a Sleep Timer function. This is a significant usability issue that the redesign should address.
This project was an important part of my self-training as a UX designer. Here are some of the things I learned:
The Human Interface Guidelines by Apple is a treasure. As an aspiring UI/UX designer, it's exciting to have a resource straight from Apple that provides excellent UI/UX advice, which can be applied not only to Apple apps but all of design. It is unexpectedly approachable and easy to follow. Straightforward and comprehensive but not overly verbose.
I designed this project on Figma and frequently used their Figma Mirror app on the iPhone, which allows you to preview the designs on an actual phone. While designing on a computer screen, your buttons and text feel well space but previewing on the real device showed many spacing problems which was immensely helpful.
I realized after I completed this how much work it goes into a full redesign on a project. There are many things that go into this type of app especially with the navigation and how to feature different shows. I feel like the broader, the changes, the less things I am able to accomplish and I would accomplish more with a smaller scope, in shorter bursts.
As of October 2022, there have been changes to the live app regarding filters and episode lists. After spending time with the app for the case study, it's interesting to look at the changes and see how they relate to the changes I made and see how they compare.
Apple has implemented a way to filter episode lists through the use of tab buttons as well as a dropdown menu. However, the filter is still buried and only accessible by going to the "All Episode Page" and not there by default on the main screen. It feels disconnected. There is still no option to search within the episode list which makes it hard to search episodes by keywords or topics.
The main podcast screen has a drop-down menu to access the same filter options, however, this feels somewhat unintuitive. I feel like my design is more straight to the point in terms of navigation because it allows users to categorize immediately.
Lastly, the main podcast screen does show more information than the previous iteration by displaying a short preview of the episode description, the rating, typology and the upload frequency of the show. I think this is an improvement.
