AUDM
USER RESEARCH | UX DESIGN | UI DESIGN
Audm is a subscription based, long-form journalism application that hosts audio stories from popular publications.
Problem
It was difficult for users to discover stories they were interested in. Stories were not organized by topic, and cluttered story cards made content challenging to read.
Goals
Improve the "Discover" section of the app to more quickly connect users to stories of interest and ensure content is legible.
RESEARCH
Objectives
Understand how people search for journalism
Understand what leads people to engage with a story (author, headline, image, etc.)
Understand how stories are traditionally organized
Methods
Competitor Analysis — I selected a series of competitors that offer audio stories (News Over Audio, Apple News+, Curio) and studied their infrastructure and features.
Interviews & Survey — I interviewed four regular news consumers and shared my interview questions in the Reddit forum "SampleSize" to understand the habits of news consumers.
Findings
My Feed / For You is Overdue
All competitors generate a “For You” feed based on previous stories or allow users to curate a “My Feed” by following topics and publications.
Titles & Images Draw in Readers
Respondents also considered the length of a story before engaging, but none were tied to specific authors or narrators.
Browsing by Topic is Popular
Half of the respondents follow topics closely. All competitors allowed users to search stories by topic.
Personas
I recognized there were two distinct types of news consumers — those who are interested in a narrow variety of topics (Sara) and those who seek to broaden and deepen their knowledge on all current events (Elias). These personas helped ensure my final design improved the experience for both.
DESIGN
Solutions
Develop "My Feed"
A personalized feed that shows stories related to topics and publications that users follow.
Add Browse by Topic
Retain "browse by publication," but replace "browse by author" with "browse by topic."
Update Story Cards
Reduce visual clutter and prioritize the information listeners utilize to chose a story: image and title.
Sketches
My initial sketches explored how I could expand the "Discover" section of the application into three tabs that housed:
A personalized feed (new)
Trending stories to discover (retained)
Topics/publications to browse (expanded)
Wireframes
While wire-framing, I dove deeper into how users would
1) browse by topics and publications and 2) subscribe and unsubscribe from topics and publications in their feed. I was getting closer, but the double stacked tabs felt a bit convoluted.
Low-Fi Prototype
A second pass at developing the infrastructure did the trick. I reduced the double stacked tabs by 1) elevating "Topics" and "Publications" to the same status as "My Feed," and 2) Eliminating the subscriptions tab with simple follow/following buttons on stories and publications.
Component Library
Because the scope of this project was limited to adding a feature to an existing product, I ensured the new component library blended seamlessly with the existing visual identity by replicating and complimenting Audm's fonts, colors, icons, etc.
UPDATED UI
Navigation
Users can easily swipe between the three tabs and select a publication or topic for articles that fall under said domain.
Follow/Unfollow
To populate their “My Feed,” users can:
Press the follow/following button next to a publication or topic from the list view
Press the follow/following button within a specific topic or publication's page
Sorting
Stories can be sorted by newest, oldest, shortest, and longest.
Publications can be sorted by following, not following, alphabetically, or reverse alphabetically.
OUTCOMES
Testing + Findings
1. Add a business article to your listening queue
Several users attempted to use the search bar when looking for a business article, which fell outside the scope of this project. With slight redirection to the "Topics" tab, users completed the task with ease.
2. Follow a publication you don’t already follow
One less tech-savvy user was not familiar with the sorting icon and suggested using the text “Sort by” as an alternative. While this swap could easily be made if further testing validated the change, I decided to retain the icon as this opinion was an outlier and cut down on what is already a text heavy interface.
3. Sort “My Feed” with the shortest stories first and play the shortest story
A suggestion that prompted a tweak in the design was to swap the location of topics and publications -- users felt they were more likely to browse by topic than publication.
Original
Update
Conclusions + Future Considerations
I believe this update to Audm fits seamlessly into the existing framework of the application, while advancing the discoverability and personalization features to better align with competitors and serve users with a variety of news consumption habits.
During this project I started to get my feet wet when it came to leveraging plugins to expedite my workflow. "Google Sheets Sync" allowed me to swiftly import images and text to populate the cards I built for stories, publications, and topics. Similarly, various icon plugins provided an easy method of importing and comparing numerous options.
If I were to continue with this project, I would likely examine the application more holistically -- the untouched pages as well as the app architecture -- to determine if further enhancements could be made to improve the user experience.
