Yusuf Alessa
Case study · Product design

Poducer

A live podcast app I designed end to end, from research to interactive prototypes.

Role
Sole product designer
Company
Elbruz Technologies
Timeline
About 3 months · 2024
Platforms
iOS, Android, web

Overview

The brief

Build a podcast app from scratch where listeners find shows fast and creators can go live with their audience.

My role

I was the only designer, working with a manager and the developers. I ran the research and personas, mapped the flows, designed 90+ screens and built the prototypes engineering worked from.

The outcome

Shipped on the App Store and Google Play. The prototypes went straight to engineering, with the interaction logic already in them.

The hard part

Going live had
no reference.

There was no podcast app doing live like this, so nothing to learn from. We studied social platforms and even distant competitors, interviewed people who listen to podcasts and people who make them, and ran a survey. The hardest part was the live screen itself: every element on it needed a reason to be where it was. I designed many versions, and we tested and reworked them until we landed on the final one.

How it came together

  1. 01

    Research

    Interviews and a survey with podcast listeners and creators.

  2. 02

    Personas

    Two sides of one app: the listener and the poducer.

  3. 03

    Flows

    Listen, follow and go live, mapped end to end.

  4. 04

    Testing

    The live flow in front of people, round after round.

  5. 05

    Handoff

    High-fidelity prototypes with the interaction logic built in.

Key decisions

Decision 01

Listen comes first

People open a podcast app to listen. So Home opens straight on episodes to play and voices to follow.

Decision 02

A page for every creator

Creators get profiles of their own, so listeners can follow the people behind the shows.

Poducer on the web and on mobile.

If I did it again

It’s still one of my favourite projects. The one thing I’d change is measuring the live flow from day one. Analytics on each step would show exactly where creators drop off, instead of waiting for the next test round.

The Sharq Tech mark as a glass sculpture in the desert at dawn

Next project

Sharq Tech

A visual identity for a technology company

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