Report Design with PodcastApp

6 min readNov 2, 2020

During the second week of the Ironhack UX/UI bootcamp , we were working on individual tracking habit application projet here’s my process.

We scroll everyday on our favorite our social media feed, and it’s fine. But it’s easy to find a this digital plague : Fake news ! Politics, Sciences, Philosophy, entertainment, culture, well-being. Every subject is concerned. Fake news makes us mad and feed anxiousness and increase fear. A disaster…
However, we can go thought this by turning our mind to a real content, so we can chasing this habits. Because knowledge will get us out from this obscurity. People value time and they want to get informed. Also I wanted to work on a (not-so) new content : podcasts

This week I manage my work according the Design process © Kenza Mezouar

Step 1 — Understand People’s needs a.k.a Reflexion, Brainstorm & Question

Collecting quantitative informations to gain insights

To understand people’s need, let’s ask people ! I decided then to create a survey —according what I needed to know, to get informations about people’s behaviours. I quickly drown this map to visualise the 4 questions’ strategy from the Chris Thelwell’s article. Someone might has already did it but this map is mine ;)

Lean Survey Canvas Asking the questions that matters.

Build a persona according the results of the survey

92 persons shared their opinion through my survey , and my research helped me to form statement.

55% of the people use their smartphone
A thirst to learn, and giving importance to blossom
70 % of the surveyed are busy during their listening
(commute, cooking, try to sleeping)
60 % has a occasional listening, not everyday and not regularly

Thanks to this gathering, I could built my persona and today this persona will be Annie Dufour, female 28 years old she’s Head of project in production in culture.

She’s running out of time
Eager to learn about her world and herself
Avoids fake news

Also this allows me to understand what kind of podcast people listen,
how they get information and especially if they listen podcast, because
everybody doesn’t listen podcast, also they might be interested.

Managing interviews to surround the people’s pain points

9 persons lent themselves to the game of getting interviewed.

And they share me their behaviours by answering this questions,
I asked them about :

What are the medias that you use to get information?
Tell me what was the last time you listen a podcast ?
What kind of podcast do you listen?
For what purpose do you listen podcast ?
What were you doing during the listening ?

By clustering informations, I corroborated topics,

People doesn’t have the time, so during a ride (foot, train trip…) 30/50 min or more to fill up the time, a way to be more productive. On the other hand, while they are working, some person use this work time to switch on an episode. Finally I understand that people are listening podcasts when they are not so focused.

Then I established my problem statement about the people’s podcast habits :

How might we encourage the user keep to listen podcast going on ?

Then came the job stories to accurate my process

When I am available I want to listen podcast so I can learn new thing.
When I am listening I want to know the time of the show so I can manage my time.
When I doing some researches I want to target what I’m looking so I can access directly on what I want .
When I’m wandering, I want to find inspiration according my mood
so I can be satisfied.

Working this way helped me to target the concrete needs of the users.

This application can be an aggregator, focused on podcast for people who already like podcasts. Even it is sometimes (i.e. 3–4 per month).
An application that curates auditive contents, and adds a few visual contents to invite people who are annoyed by the 100% auditive aspect.

Step 2— Solving People’s needs a.k.a Sketching, Drawing & try again

Why am I drawing this and this ?

During my interviews, I took in account that people valued the time and some of them would love to get to their podcast program quickly because they already have a playlist. Also I added an other way to get to the program by using a search feature. For persons who rather know more about a subject, it possible to browse through the library and getting informed. The goal of the reside in the information, then I took care to provide “more infos” screen. Because this is a listening application I brought a player screen to control the track, (to advance, rewind, turn on, turn off the sound). I putting on paper my ideas.

Second Low-fi Prototype to understand the user flow,

This is the first step to the prototype, also for the sake of time for the user I decided to add the some controls of the listening everywhere in the app in case the user need to stop it.

Design Decisions

In this part I’d like to share my process between usability test and improvement of my prototype from paper to digital

The act of drawing on paper illustrates more the idea of my intentions.

As long as I draw on paper, it’s easy to draw and start again. The act of drawing on paper illustrates more the idea of my intentions, however go straight with software can be a pain in the neck, because a lot details has to be taken in account.

Here’s three iterations showing the evolution according two steps of usability test. Those rounds trip between prototyping and test was a perfect balance to improve this application and keep the user at center of my concerns

First Crazy 8’s: Time had to be take in an account.
Adding topic tag connected with the podcast
Prototype Version 1 :
Feature Screen, adding a title, and player, button controls
Mid-Fidelity Version 2 :
The player is not required, Implementation of the navbar at the bottom of the screen

First sketch : List of suggestions with player at the bottom
Prototype Version 1:
Display the icon time, and the range tag, details of the player
Mid-Fidelity Version 2 :
Redefine the wording, putting a navbar at the bottom of the screen, and simplify the page

Now the prototype is out !

🔗 To discover the MVP prototype go click on this Figma link :
https://www.figma.com/proto/cg4o699DEZZ44rTYOj4nm7/podcast-project-V.2?node-id=32%3A61&scaling=scale-down

Learn lessons from this project The Takeaways

Figma,
I understand how to use prototype tools and connecting screens

Narrow down, less diverging,
I diverge a lot, and really want to go in depth in my search, but as my user I’m running out of time.

Push myself by pushing others and ask for help!
Asking to my network to answer to the survey it’s not an easy task.

Some people don’t share the same passion.
In the survey interviews, we had to bounce to other question to ask on what they like .

Thank you for reading and please, if you have any feedback or comment don’t hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn or at hello@kenziekenza.com .