Technically Speaking
Problem: Podcast users were suffering from choice fatigue due to the overwhelming amount of options presented on the landing page. Podcast uses wanted to know about and go to events to build community. Podcast users wanted additional resources to guide them in their careers.
Roles: UX Research, UX Design.
Duration: 4 week sprint.
Team size: 3 Person team.
Design Process
Stake-holder interview
I and my team had the wonderful pleasure of meeting Harrison Wheeler, the founder of the podcast Technically speaking. A podcast that focuses on bringing community, learning, and content to BIPOC designers in tech. He does this with deep-dive episodes with leaders in the industry that seek to educate his listeners by sharing real stories and experiences.
Focus on community building and raising awareness
Predominant users are Bipoc designers, Early Career - Mid Level.
Desire to expand event awareness and attendance.
User Interviews
Some key things we were interested in knowing were, their interaction with podcasts as a whole, what they needed from the experience of joining the organization, what needs were being met by the website and what needs were not.
Our interview script:
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The Interview candidates were Bipoc designers ranging from Early to senior-level career stages. Some common themes emerged:
Listeners want a space that provides them with up-to-date emerging trends in the industry.
Listeners want a space where they can find ways to form an authentic community with other users who share their interests and identities.
Listeners are looking for spaces to make an impact, including mentorship and networking connections.
Competitive
Analysis
We used the swot analysis of 5 similar podcasts to further understand our target audience and what they were already familiar with. We intended to identify common features, analyze strengths and weaknesses, understand how to stand out in this market, and also see opportunities for growth in our design.
Affinity
Mapping
Our affinity map helped us organize user thought into a visual guide that we used to guide our define process. We explored the community aspect and we had data that suggested users wanted a place where they could form a community, a website that prompted them to engage and form relationships, and an easy guide to listening to the podcasts.
Listeners wanted a place where they could find unique resources specific to their career journey and identity.
Listeners were experiencing choice fatigue with the overwhelming choices of episodes to listen to.
Listeners would be willing to pay to be a member of a community that supports and centers BIPOC designers.
Persona
The persona was an opportunity to form an easily relatable creation of the data that we had carried out during research. I was responsible for completing the persona. I came up with a bio, along with age range and interests. I spoke about values like community and career growth and used a slider to highlight personality traits that impacted how our users would be using the website.
Journey
Map
In the journey map, the main objective was to identify critical points in our user's experience of the site. We started with discovery. We added features like a voice about me, to highlight the audio experience of the purpose of the site. We focused on the ability to access all the other pages from the landing page. We kept this in mind through every page and made an interactive experience to guide the user from discovery to subscription and event registration.
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Feature Highlights
Before:
A navigation menu that doesn't properly highlight the important attributes of the website.
After:
A navigation menu that clearly directs the users to important pages on the website with a clear call to action.
Before:
Too many choices on the landing page. Could be overwhelming and contribute to choice fatigue.
After:
One highlighted episode to quickly get designers into the podcast with a clear CTA the directs them to platforms where they can subscribe.
Before:
Only one resource is integrated into the website. Other resources are hidden in an external link that isn't always familiar to the designers on the page.
After:
Resources are highlighted on the landing page with images and descriptions to showcase to designers what impact going to the resource page can have on their careers.
Before:
No context or showcase of the events and community-building methods that the podcast was involved in.
After:
A section on the landing page showcasing community meetups and highlighting impact.
Conclusion
Some challenges faced during this process were making sure that we were keeping the integrity of the website while introducing the new aspects that the user needed to turn this website from a media site into a supportive community. In the end, we suggested prioritizing a new resource page, refining the landing page and spotlighting the events page. We knew that these were important steps to get the user to start interacting more with the site and seeing it as a hub for community building and career growth. Here is the current site with the updates Harrison made as a result of our user research.
