IMPROVING APPLE PODCASTS
Adding a new feature to an existing mobile app
Role: UX Designer
Client: Apple Podcasts
Team: 1 UX Designer
Context: Ironhack Bootcamp
Overview
The objective of this project was to improve an existing application in order to increase the number of subscribers. We had to:
Identify a missing feature in the application
Check whether this feature is really valued by users
Implement this feature while using the visual language of the existing application
What market leaders are doing?
To identify what might be missing from the Apple Podcasts application, we carried out a comparative study of the leading applications in the market:
After analysis, we verified that one of the missing features on our app is the possibility to explore radio stations. On Apple Podcasts, we can search for podcasts by genre or countries, but we cannot explore radio stations content according to our preferences.
Analyzing the reviews of the applications studied, we observed that having an application that combines podcasts and radio stations is one of the features most valued by users. Users are willing to pay for this feature:
What do users need?
Once we had carried out our market research, we conducted interviews to confirm our hypotheses and find out more about our user’s habits.
Below are the conclusions drawn from our research:
Users currently use one app to listen to podcasts and another to listen to the radio.
Users would like to use a single application to access all content (podcasts & radio stations).
Users would like to listen and discover content from all over the world and different genres.
User persona
Giving users the possibility of discovering and exploring radio stations will complete their listening experience with Apple Podcasts.
Integrating the new feature
We define the information architecture of the application to integrate the new feature and the new user-flow into the existing structure.
Users must have easy access (footer menu) to radio stations and be able to search for content according to their preferences (genre, country, favorites...) In this sitemap we can see the user-flow for searching for a classical music radio station from a particular country:
Sitemap & New User Flow
The final product
Results
This new functionality allows Apple Podcasts users to:
Search for radio stations by preferences
Listen to and explore the content of these channels
Bookmark a content as favorite
Get other suggestions related to the selected content
Mid-Fi prototypes
Hi-Fi prototypes
Running our app
Thanks for reading!