UX Project, Acast

UX Design Project @ KTH - 2020

This UX project aimed to improve the podcast experience for users within the Acast application. The project involved a thorough examination of the problem space, focusing on gaining comprehensive insights into user frustrations when using Acast. The design phase included the creation of wireframes and interactive prototypes, emphasizing a user-centered approach to address and mitigate identified challenges.

My role on the project involved everything from conducting user research, defining key insights, creating personas, to creating wireframes and the final UI designs for the project. I worked with a group of people focusing on deliverables while practicing group development, creative processes, and leadership.

User Research

To improve the experience for Acast listeners, we started looking at how the current app was structured and analyzed the flow and overall aesthetic of the app. A competitive analysis was conducted to understand the different contexts and interaction models of other podcast platforms.

A contextual inquiry was conducted using a semi-structured approach. A total of five people were interviewed while using the Acast application. Observations were made regarding the user's reactions and thoughts while using the podcast application.

Key Learnings

From the contextual inquiry, we gained some valuable insights. The high-level pain point was that it was challenging to explore new podcasts. The user spent a lot of time scrolling and searching for a new podcast to listen to. The categories for different podcast topics were also poorly visualized. It only included one related topic without subcategories, making it challenging for the user to explore new content. The visual design of the play functions also felt overwhelming and unclear.

Design challenge

We divided the problems into different key objectives and started working on them in parallel. Using "How Might We" questions, customer journey, and a persona, helped us explore new design solutions.

Discover

How might we make it more intuitive for users to discover new podcasts?

Persona

A persona was created to summarize the interviews and communicate the user's behavior, goals, and frustrations. It also helped us focus on the user's goals and needs while designing the product.

Customer journey

The customer journey was used to define and visualize the steps the user took to accomplish a certain goal in the Acast application. The users' pain points and insights were stated which further gave ideas for exploring different solutions.

Design system

To create consistency for the design we studied Acast's current design system to find existing patterns and UI components, and based on that we created a new design library in Figma.

Wireframes

We focused on re-design the discovery page and new ways for the user to explore podcasts. Solutions were first sketched out on paper and then by creating lo-fi wireframes and interactive prototypes in Figma.

Final Design