Spectrum News™ Podcasts
// Case Study
Overview
What is Native Podcasts?
Native Podcasts is a Charter Communications 4-phase initiative to improve a native podcast experience for users so that they can better discover, initiate playback, control playback, and manage podcasts in the Spectrum News app.
Role
Product Designer
Duration
October 2020 - August 2021
Squad
2 Product Owners
1 Product Manager
1 - 2 Engineering Managers
3 - 8 Mobile Engineers (iOS & Android)
1 - 2 Data Scientists
1 UX Researcher
Problem
Why improve Native Podcasts?
The Spectrum Networks team hosts integrated podcasts that they syndicate and make available with an embedded media player accessible only through article pages or hidden menus on both web and mobile app. This functionality no longer meets the needs of our customers nor is it intuitive for them to discover or easily identify to maintain user engagement
There has been a desire to make the exiting podcast experience "more native" and more immersive
Competitive Analysis
How do our customers consume Podcasts today?
We looked for common Podcast UI & entry-point patterns in our top competitor’s apps
We then cross-referenced those patterns with our own internal UI & user data to surface significant opportunities in which we could improve our existing implementation as well as position ourselves for scalable testing & re-iteration
Research
Discovery phase
We surveyed over 300 of our existing users and surfaced some interesting key insights:
17%
of visits include a podcast discovery impression
32%
of overall podcast playback starts
44%
of overall podcast playback completions
Sketches & Specs
Exploration phase
Armed with user data we were able to start ideating on visualizing solutions, iterating on entrypoints, overall experiences & redlining specs.
Prototyping & Testing
Testing phase
Now with business approved designs, user data, wireframes, flowcharts and overall product alignment - we were ready to begin creating a comprehensive prototype for user testing our hypotheses.
Tools Used
Sketch
InVision
Internal UX Research Team
UserTesting.com
Launch
Phase 1 & 2
We rolled out a Phase 1 version of Native Podcasts in mid Q1 of 2021 and Phase 2 shortly after in Q2 of 2021 to our entire user base in order to maximize exposure, measure effectiveness and to test multiple usability metrics in order to see how well, or poorly, our product performed.
Phase 1 & 2 Results
Visits that contain podcast starts are nearly four times longer on average than visits that contained podcast content views prior to the launch of the feature
Visits with a podcast start average roughly 20 minutes in length (between podcast listenership and other app browsing), compared to an average of around five minutes for visits with podcast page views prior to the introduction of the native player
In the app, when users listened to at least 10% of a podcast, they went on to listen to an additional 10 minutes of that podcast on average
What’s Next?
In store for Phase 3 & 4
Native Podcasts is now responsible for a significant amount of user retention as well as new user adoption in the Spectrum News app for iOS & Android.
Phase 3 will be more about improving the user experience and maintenance of our implemented code while Phase 4 is pointed at delivering a more holistic and unified experience with other future News product on the 2021 & 2022 roadmaps at Charter Communications.
