TL;DR I changed the name of my thesis project and I’m making pretty good progress towards my Proof of Concept.
In my last post I ended by saying I’d be focusing on the following questions;
How can I bring people closer to content they enjoy?
How can I engage people at different levels of engagement?
Convert neutral people to superusers?
How can I use metadata to recommend new content?
Can I make the experience feel custom and curated?
Element of surprise
My focus on the answers to these questions also warranted a name change, not to mention peoples’ reactions to the name PODDIE were polarizing. I decided on Earshot, for now, because it references things that you overhear and are passively exposed to. I liked the idea that Earshot is a network where you’re sort of overhearing what others are listening to and that info is used to shape what you listen to.
After the name change, I began focusing on podcast discovery and managed to nail down some key features including, using tagging to categorize, using preferences to deliver playlists (think Spotify), and recommending content based on mood or desired emotion (think Beats sentence).
So far, I made an app map, did some sketching, and started wireframing, all of which you can see below.
App Map
Sketches
Wireframes
After showing these wireframes, and a few others, to my advisor, she pointed out some things that were unclear to her, which was very helpful. One thing about working on this project alone is that it sometimes feels like a vacuum and I can get caught up in my own head. Having to share my work with her every week not only holds me accountable, but also forces me explain my design decisions and get feedback from a non-designer which is wildly valuable.
Over the next week I’ll be focusing on pushing my wireframes and creating a prototype.
This week’s Thesis III homework was focused on creating and presenting a prototype idea. I decided to focus more on the discussion interaction and think about what that could be like.
After presenting my prototype in class, I received the following feedback:
Who is the intended audience?
Should the listening aspect happen before the discussion?
Or do they happen simultaneously, but the app suggests with a group should take a break to discuss
What is the context of use?
Should text be relied on more instead of audio and video?
Text is scannable
Text is a medium most people are very familiar with
Can PODDIE make hosts break up content so that there are breaks within the content?
Having a break allows for discussion time so as not to interrupt the listening experience
Is there a way for users to bookmark moments and revisit them later?
Select clips of the podcast to refer back to during discussion
This feedback helped me think more about making the discussion experience work for a variety of users. After sharing my prototype and the feedback above with my thesis advisor, she pushed me to think more broadly about the issues on the space and think more about why I wanted to focus on discussion. Ultimately, her feedback was that my goal was to bring people closer to the content, but focusing on discussion felt like a small way to bring superusers closer to the content and in doing so I might be alienating new listeners from using my product.
Her feedback made me feel like I needed to do the “5 Whys” activity. In doing so, I realized that she was right. I want other people to love podcasts and understand the value of the medium. A more large-scale way to accomplish this is the create a platform that exposes people to the content that is right for them. My focus is still on allowing people to interact with content that matters to them, but instead of focusing on discussion as the mechanism to make that happen, I’ll be focusing on discovery and recommendation.
Moving forward, I’ll be focusing on the following questions:
How can I bring people closer to content they enjoy?
How can I engage people at different levels of engagement?
Convert neutral people to superusers?
How can I use metadata to recommend new content?
Can I make the experience feel custom and curated?
Element of surprise
Overall, I’m pleased with what I came up with because it allowed me to push conversations forward and get great feedback.
TL;DR: Podcasts should use video and audio for dialogue, discovery, and sharing.
In the first class of the semester, we spent time getting back into the ideation mindset. As a reminder, for you and me, my goals for my thesis are to:
1. Take the podcast experience from individual to community.
2. Give users a way to listen to, interact with, and discuss content that matters to them.
We started class by working with a partner to identify the current perception of our problem space, common solutions, and the ideas and habits that perpetuate the problem. Here’s what my partner, Jess, and I came up with:
Current Perceptions
“Nerd” persona, only nerds listen to podcasts
Time commitment, all podcasts are long
Connection to radio, outdated medium
Lack of diversity around topics
All hosts are/sound the same
NPR/Ira Glass
Very high barrier of entry
Common Solutions
Podcast player apps
Music platforms offering podcast content
Live stream/Q&A with producers
Reddit discussions
Podcast recommendation sites
More media attention
Serial - story develops over time
Live shows
Ideas & Habits that perpetuate the problem
Headphone culture shuts people out, anti-social
Asynchronous nature of conversation
Barrier of entry
Trolls
Not knowing who listened
Separate listening and social experience
After we identified the issues, we focused on ways to innovate in the space. These are some of the ideas we discussed:
Video replies
Podcast snippets (think iTunes music preview)
Trailers for podcasts
Vevo - music, Hulu - tv, Poddie - podcasts
Use of hashtags to bring social to podcasts and get users involved in the story
Crowdsourcing aspects of the story...users submit video reaction or story to be used as podcast content
“Discover” page on Snapchat but for Podcast shows
After this exercise, we switched partners and worked on creating a “blue sky” idea, or the best case solution. Below is a sketch of what we came up with.
This idea is for a platform that, like Slack, allows you to create and join channels for things you’re interested in. Rather than focusing on just podcasts, this product would allow users to create and join channels about anything they’re interested in, from Serial to Making a Murder. With the rise of on-demand media and entertainment, people want more behind the scenes information and want to be able to discuss what they’re consuming. This platform would give users access to behind the scenes info that content creators (hosts, producers, filmmakers) provide. Additionally, users would be able to see who has consumed the same content as them and would be able to start discussions. The platform would also have a robust sharing feature that would allow them to share snippets of the content.
Overall, the idea that stuck with me the most is the idea of using video and audio for discovery, dialogue, and sharing.
After reviewing the prototype I made last semester, I think there were some things I did well and some that can be improved in future iterations. I read somewhere that when being creative you have to practice so you can get the “trash” work out the way and get to your better ideas. Not to say the entire prototype was trash, but it was good to get those basic design ideas out of my head. Getting that design out has prepared me to take a fresh look at what I want to do.
The strongest feature of my prototype was the idea of knowing who listens to the same content as you and when they’ve listened. The weakest feature was was the Convos, not because discussing isn’t important, but because the Convos section didn’t do a great job getting at the root of what I want to create. My goals, creating empathy via audio and taking the experience from individual to community, didn’t come across clearly and in retrospect, the experience felt like it could be for any kind of content or messaging.
Going forward I want to explore the following things:
Design
How could the design be more clear and simple?
Interaction
How do I make this feel like a “listening party”
Do hosts/producer need to be involved?
Is text commenting the most engaging way to discuss?
Video
Live
Technical
Should hosts tag content to help with discovery?
Do I even want to think about solving for discovery?
Based on the list above, I think the design and interaction portions will require more prototyping work and the technical aspect will require a bit of research. I’m know that tagging is possible, but I want to be able to speak to how this might fit into the content-upload process.
Ultimately, the most important aspect of the things I want to explore is the interaction. I haven’t figured out how to make the experience feel engaging and make users want to come back. Last semester I focused heavily on testing ways to converse about content, all of which involved text. Maybe this is something I need to back away from and explore less limiting ways for users to share thoughts.
Last semester ended after a series of insane deadlines, group projects, and experiments. After being sure that I was going to focus on testing an in-person discussion, I wrapped that up and didn’t feel like I had a compelling presentation for my last Thesis class, so I decided to create a prototype. I figured I’d review the insights I learned from all of my listening/dialogue experiments and come up with a few key features based on those insights. Here’s what I came up with:
I presented this Invision prototype in class and received the following feedback:
The name, PODDIE, when said out loud sounds like potty. :-/
Do I want it to be playful or pick a new name?
Convos should be more prominent and less disjointed from the listening experience
Explore other social flows and interactions
Consider other ways to comment
Audio?
Explore at what point does public not serve a purpose
Provide a sense of community that doesn’t feel overwhelming
Make this clean, less “troll-y”
Is “Public” available during certain times where there’s a facilitator?
Consider quick community actions
Polls?
Tell a better story of a person who learns something new or walks away more empathetic as a result of using PODDIE
This feedback was very useful in providing direction for this semester! I’m looking forward to digging in and thinking of new directions.
1.a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied.
You guessed it, I’m prototyping for thesis, AGAIN! If you didn’t get a chance to read about my previous prototype tests, read about them here. This time around, I’m testing two experiences.
Test 1
What is it: An in person discussion, think “book club for podcasts”. Participants will listen to a specific podcast episode in advance and then discuss as a group, in person.
What I Want to Learn: The benefits of discussing in-person, so that I can better understand the trade-offs I’ll make when I decide between whether my solution should be digital or physical/in-person.
Why I’m excited: I’m excited about this test because instead of having participants provide feedback about the experience via a survey, I’m going to record video reactions and feedback. Trying a different method for getting feedback was important to me because surveys are can be annoying and often yield inaccurate data.
Test 2
What is it: A Facebook group that will be treated like a comment thread. Participants will listen to a specific podcast episode by a deadline and then comment with their thoughts and questions, and respond to others’ comments.
What I Want to Learn: I want to learn how people feel about the asynchronous listening and commenting experience. I also want to learn how comment threads might fit into my solution.
Why I’m excited: My classmate, Carrie, recommended that I use a Facebook group because of the comment and reply functionality. I’m really excited about the medium because it has the functionality that most closely mimics the concept I initially had in mind.
You may be wondering how I got here...
Last week in class we got feedback on the final prototypes we’ve been planning. Some of the key feedback that influenced the tests above included:
Using a Facebook group as a comment thread
Recording the in-person session and people’s feedback as an alternative to surveys
I started with three ideas, but I don’t think I’ll be able to manage all three, so I’ll focus on the two I detailed above. Ultimately, executing these prototypes while juggling three group projects is the most challenging part of this experience. By narrowing down to two tests, I can focus on the quality of my tests and the presentation of the results.
I’ll be done testing and analyzing by Sunday. Stay tuned for results!
So, after creating my test plan, which you can read more about here, I moved into the logistics of the tests. Below is a chart that shows the tests I ran and the different variables that were specific to each:
For each test I asked for recommendations for podcast shows and episodes, and here’s what we ended up listening to:
Slack - 99% Invisible “War & Pizza”
Email - The Broad Experience “Working with Women”
Hangouts - The Broad Experience “ A Difficult Decade”
Text - The Broad Experience “All the Right Moves”
By Sunday, November 8th, all of my tests were done and I sent out my post-test feedback survey to learn more about how people felt about the experience.
Ultimately, the information I wanted to gain from the survey fell into the following buckets:
Engagement & conversation quality
Comparison to their regular listening/commenting experience
Feelings about the medium (Slack, Email, Hangouts, Text)
Likelihood of participating again
Some of the feedback that stood out to me included comments like,
“I think email was good. It allowed us to gather our thoughts. Maybe email works well for initial comments, but a chat I feel would be more interactive and and generate more of a dialog.”
“It forced me to listen to something new and out of my comfort zone.”
“I've usually just raised it in in-person conversation, or posted it asynchronously on social channels (not expecting very much back and forth.) This was new, but I did like it a lot. I'd do it again. NPS v high.”
“It was a different experience to have everyone sharing their point of view in the moment, and reacting to the bulk of the content as opposed to talking about it at a later time and only addressing the bigger points that we were able to remember.”
Overall, these are the insights I gained from the tests and the questions that I want to answer in my next prototype:
With real-time chat, people need a cue when others are about to comment.
Question: How might we leverage the benefits of in-person conversation?
Content and people need to be a good match.
Question: How might we select content based on participants’ interests?
Conversations were richer when participants knew each other well
Question: How might we encourage conversation between people who don’t know one another?
People want the benefits of real-time discussion, without the limits of digital tools
Question: How might we encourage more detailed commenting despite the use of mobile tools?
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be focusing on learning from podcast creators and producers, in an effort to understand how they might help shape my idea.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve spent much of my time planning and executing a few thesis prototypes. I started off thinking I’d test one concept and was quickly encouraged to test as many concepts as possible, which turned into me testing four different types of listening and commenting experiences. For the sake of sharing how iterative the process was, I’m going to outline the evolution of the prototype design and then get into the execution and results in a different post.
Oct 20th: Thesis Prototype is assigned in class
Oct 26th:
I map out my assumptions and prioritize them.
Based on my assumptions, I create a few hypotheses.
Based on my hypothesis and prioritization matrix, I decide which hypotheses I want to test and come up with prototype idea.
Final Hypothesis: Podcast listeners have opinions about what they hear and want to share them.
Thought I knew what I wanted to learn, it was a bit difficult for me to determine how I could test those things. I came up with two ides, but I knew that I wanted feedback from my classmates about other ways to test my assumptions.
Initial Prototype Ideas:
Have a group of people listen to a podcast of their choice and record their reactions during the listening experience. After they finish the episode, have them record their thoughts of the experience in the form that is most comfortable for them.
Select a section of a podcast and have people listen to it while recording their facial expressions. After finishing the clip, listeners decide if they want to reflect and if so, have them record their thoughts in the form that is most comfortable for them.
Oct 27th: I present my assumptions map, hypotheses, and prototype ideas in class and get feedback (see below).
Nov 3rd:
During class, I shared my updated prototype idea and the progress I had made. I received the following comments and questions:
Try to test as many concepts as possible.
Is there a way to simulate leaving comments within content
Asynchronous vs synchronous -- what’s most effective?
Make the logistics VERY clear to participants
Is there a facilitator?
Nov 4th: Based on the feedback I received, I revamped my idea.
Updated Prototype Idea: Assign a podcast for a group to listen to (asynchronously) and chat about it on Slack (synchronously) at a specified time.
I decided on four prototype tests to explore synchronicity of listening and commenting, communication medium, and note-taking as you can see below.
Once I solidified my test plan, it was time for the fun part, the actual execution, which I’ll explain in my next post!
Monday I had the pleasure of attending the Tech808 Conference. Tech 808, hosted by Phat Startup, is the only hip hop-inspired tech entrepreneurship conference.
I got to hear from speakers I'd always wanted to hear and learned about the work of some innovators I wasn't familiar with. The highlight speakers for me were:
Minerva Tantoco, CTO of New York City
Amos Winbush, CEO of Cybersynchs
Tristan Walker, Founder of Walker & Company
James Altucher, Bestselling Author and Podcaster
I also had the opportunity to take an "us-ie" (see below) with Minerva Tantoco and the other attendees, which was pretty awesome. I’m the person in yellow just behind Minerva.
Overall, the experience was great. Some of the key themes of the talks were, innovation, diversity, digital content, and securing funding. Here are some of the points that inspired me:
When you invest in tech, you bet on the jockey, not the horse.
Your inner voice should be your biggest cheerleader and not your biggest critic.
Choose your habits.
Don’t let your failure define you. Failure is inevitable, but the more you focus on it the less time you spend working on your next idea.
Treat idea generation like a muscle and flex it everyday. Write down 10 ideas a day.
I left the conference having learned a lot and feeling inspired. Job well done to the Phat Startup team!
This week I took a group trip to Washington Square Park, for Public Interfaces class. Our final project requires us to come up with an intervention in a public space and my group chose NYU's pseudo student quad, Washington Square Park.
While in the park, I was reminded of why I chose to come to school in New York. Having grown up in Chicago, New York seemed to be the only place stateside that could offer me even more of a city feeling. The sensory overload and the insane amount of people create a space that is full of inspiration and opportunities for intervention, which was exactly what I was going for. Today's park visit made me realize just how much I appreciate this city. Every delayed train, every person who doesn't stand to the right and walk to the left, and every park, is a reminder of all the ways design can be used to make NYC even better than it already is, and there's something quite invigorating about that.
This week I’ve been really focused on developing my thesis idea. In addition to playing Pictionary, which was quite fun, we did in-class activity that helped me expand my thinking. For the activity we worked in groups of 3 and spent roughly 30 minutes per person helping each other push our ideas.
My thesis topic is the community aspect, or lack thereof, of the podcast listening experience. I worked with Max and Somin, who were great about asking clarifying questions. Answering their questions really helped my clarify what I care most about as it relates to my problem space. For the next few weeks, I’m going to focus on creating a space for conversation around podcast content. Beyond pinpointing what my focus will be, my group members also brainstormed some ideas and here’s what they explored:
What if people could use their friends listening history to find new content?
What if listeners created content that would be linked to the podcast they listened to? Video reactions?
What if many people submitted content to an editor and the editor created podcast content based on those submissions?
What if people could leave content in certain locations that could be unlocked when listeners reached those locations?
How might we make podcast commenting viral? What if you could pass on an episode or reaction, and challenge others to create a response? (like the ice bucket challenge)
All of these ideas and questions helped me look at the variety of directions i can pursue. Creating an app that allowed for commenting seemed like an obvious solution, one that I wanted to steer clear of. This activity and my teammates helped me realize that there are a ton of ways I can approach this problem.
Based on their ideas, here are some key things I plan to explore:
Challenges: challenging friends to create a response
Reactions/Responses: video reaction, commenting, access to related content
Storytelling: share a story about how the content relates to you, offer a differing perspective
Usually before classes start we’re all finding food and drinks (as you can see from all the drinks on the desks), but on this particular day we had some entertainment. Jess and Shixiao played the ukulele and sang for about 30 minutes. It was a nice respite from thesis discussions and user journey mapping.
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
