UI Design | UX | User Research
End-to-End Mobile App
MY Role
Product Designer
the team
Project Manager, CTO, Flutter Engineer, Data Engineer
Deliverables
Wireframes, Visual Designs, User Testing
Project Description
Over the past few months I've worked as the company's product designer to build the UX/UI of the app, taking it from the MVP to the current design. The primary goal has been to improve the overall usability, look and feel of the app, and to design key features that would increase conversions and retention.
Outcomes
Growth in DAU
With my design iteration on the onboarding flow, onboarding drop-off rates decreased by 37%.
Increase in Retention
Since I joined the team as the sole product designer there was a 30% increase in retention for week one new users and 55% for week two.
Higher customer experience metrics
Increased the NPS score to 60.
Process
I started by learning about the current spoken audio space and competitors, did an assessment of the state of the app and how it's features compared with other apps on the market. Then I looked at how users engaged with the app and the pain points they experienced when completing tasks. I got a full picture of the project through secondary research, competitor analysis, user studies and speaking with colleagues.
Goals: Simplify spoken audio discovery
01
Personalized Audio Recs
Create the best experience for users to discover spoken audio content based on their individual interests and preferences
02
Diversify Audio Content
Expand the scope of audio discovery from podcasts to all audio content, including book chapters, articles and recorded talks
03
Increase Usability
Adding features that give users the ability to categorize, search and easily organize their audio library
Problem space
Podcast listeners most common complaint is discovery. It’s challenging to find new, high-quality shows and episodes in specific categories. Typically, users rely on recommendations from friends, or google search results for top-podcasts lists to find new audio content. Our solution: recommending episodes, not shows, for a lower cognitive load.
Challenge: personalized audio recommendations
Users want to quickly find new audio content with the purpose of learning something new, and being entertained. However, the mobile app MVP lacked critical features allowing users to access, play and save episodes and shows, increasing user frustration and decreasing retention.
I found many users came to the app looking for recommendations but then listened to episodes on other apps they felt more comfortable with, like Spotify or Castbox. My goal has been to improve the fuctionality of the app by adding tablestake features, improving the onboarding flow, and improving the library feature so users can easily save episodes to listen to later.
Results
The current mobile application has features competitive to industry standards and user expectations, a refreshed UI and a new onboarding flow. In addition, I am part of the team creating the feature roadmap and pitch deck for investors as the start-up is in a fundraising phase.
Improved bookmarks and reorganized library feature
Saving episodes to listen to later- and being able to sort and find episodes in the library- was one of users biggest pain points. Here I:
- Implemented a new icon set based on a library theme
- Added the ability to bookmark episodes on the home screen and on the episode screen
- Organized the library screen by categories and collected all new episodes from followed shows in one list
Added functionalities to be competitive with industry standards
The app lacked must have features expected by users from audio apps.
- Skip forward and back by 30 sec
- Adjust player speed
- Share episodes with contacts
New onboarding flow and design to increase conversions
Giving users a clear understanding of the purpose and value add of the app through onboarding was imperative to increase retention and reduce churn.
- Reorganized onboarding screens for lower cognitive load
- Rewrote UX copy to make onboarding similar to a personality quiz
- Set user expectations for how search and browse functions work in the app
Refreshed UI with consistent components
I created a design library for the app, with consistent icons, colors, fonts and spacing, to be used across the app. The library helped me to communicate with developers and also clean up the app from the MVP form it started in.
Reflection
Outcomes from user studies revealed that while almost all users struggled with audio discovery, the pain point was not severe enough for them to make a switch from their current audio app, or pay for a discovery service. User studies and analysis of the outcomes led the company to a pivot, since we didn't have a market fit.
Iteration & Pivot
My team and I found most audio listeners want to learn and be entertained. Users look to spoken audio as a new form of education on-the-go. They listen to interviews from experts in their field to level up professionally, learn more about the demands and challenges, and to know who the major players and visionary's are within their field.
Identifying the micro learning space as a possible market fit has enabled us to pivot to our new mission: a vertical social network for domain experts.
New Mission, New Opportunities
With the pivot the company has been accepted to Start-Up Boost LA, a pre-accelerator program as well as to On Deck. With this opportunity the team plans to continue iterating the product and grow.
