Earshot v3 - Listening Experience Prototype
Xuebing Du
Peter Solarz
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Earshot v3 - Listening Experience Prototype
Earshot v3 Prototype
Earshot v1 - Proof of Concept
After much feedback and iteration, I landed on the proof of concept below.
I received a lot of valuable feedback on this version, the key questions being:
Rating
What are other ways ratings can be done beyond smiley faces?
Do smiley faces get at nuance of podcasts?
Is there a special way to share a podcast you REALLY love?
“Shout” or “Yell” a podcast
Conversation
Can you start a conversation with a friend from the player?
Can you start a converation from the “Earshot” view?
Friends/Following
Is the social scale and interaction meant to be more like Snapchat (intimate), Facebook ( semi-intimate), or Twitter (public)?
These are the questions I’ll be focusing on in v2.
From PODDIE to Earshot
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.
PODDIE v2
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.
Thesis III - Ideate, Ideate, Ideate
TL;DR: Podcasts should use video and audio for dialogue, discovery, and sharing.
Thesis II Reflection & Evaluation
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.
Experimentation
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.
You work slowly when believing you can achieve perfection. You work quickly once you realize perfect is boring. Just make stuff and fix it.
Kazu Kibuishi, on drawing comics [x] (via fromelliott)
pro·to·type
ˈprōdəˌtīp/
noun:
prototype
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...
Testing, Testing, 123 - Part 2
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.
Testing, Testing, 123 - Part 1
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.
[Week 9] Tech808 Conference
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.
[Week 8] I Heart NY
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.
[Week 7] Teamwork Makes the...
Dream work, duh!
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:
[Week 6] How We Pass the Time
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.