PODCAST FAN MOBILE APP
Crime Junkie Fan Club App
Project description
The goal of the Crime Junkie fan app was to help listeners efficiently discover, organize, and engage with episodes while fostering community and personalized curation.
Timeline
From explorations to final designs in 10-12 weeks while working with multiple projects at the same time
Background
Being part of the Digital Product Design & Development team at Studio Science, our goal was to create a unique and engaging community experience, curate podcast content effectively, and provide exclusive features and announcements within a dedicated Crime Junkie app.
Process
This category details the step-by-step approach taken during the project, including research, planning, design, development, testing, and optimization phases.
What is Crime Junkie?
Crime Junkie is a true crime podcast hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. It covers various true crime cases, providing in-depth information and analysis on unsolved mysteries, missing persons, and murders. With a growing fan base it was important to empower fans to have an elevated listening experience and contribute to the content creation process.
Hypothesis
Upon joining the group, I discovered valuable UX research findings and insights. However, our product lacked a well-defined direction. To tackle this issue, I spearheaded a Design Sprint involving our multidisciplinary team and dedicated three days to activities that focused on developing a vision. After the sprint, I gathered all the ideas produced and devised an initial product vision and roadmap, highlighting 3 essential aspects to concentrate on. I shared this with our executive team, who showed great enthusiasm and support. This roadmap remains the backbone for project planning and prioritization.
Research & Analysis
To validate our preliminary hypothesis, we conducted interviews and surveys with Crime Junkie listeners and artists to understand their preferences, pain points, and expectations. We also reviewed Crime Junkie's podcast episodes comments, overall reviews and website reviews to identify key elements that could enhance user engagement. With an initial ideation, we decided to conduct an analysis how the other apps in the same field are doing.
Competitive Analysis & Information Architecture:
Based on our initial research, we conducted a competitive analysis across three categories: Crime Podcast Applications, General Podcast Applications, and Music Streaming Applications. This analysis helped us identify industry trends, best practices, and areas where we could differentiate the Crime Junkie app.
Similar Crime Podcast Applications
General Podcast Applications
Music Streaming Applications
True Crime: This popular crime podcast app offers a lively community forum where listeners can discuss episodes and share their own true crime stories. The app also provides episode transcripts, enhancing accessibility.
Real Life Real Crime focuses on immersive storytelling, featuring detailed episode descriptions and an option to view crime scene photos. It emphasizes deep dives into cases, catering to enthusiasts seeking comprehensive content.
Key Takeaways:
Community engagement features such as forums and discussions are valuable for crime podcast enthusiasts.
Detailed episode descriptions and additional media content contribute to a more engaging experience.
2. General Podcast Applications:
Apple Podcasts: Apple Podcasts provides a vast library of podcasts, but its social features are limited. User reviews and ratings help with content discovery to some extent.
Key Takeaways:
Personalization and content recommendations are strong points in general podcast applications.
Social and community features are often less prominent or lacking.
3. Music Streaming Applications:
Spotify: As mentioned earlier, Spotify offers both music and podcast content. It excels in music discovery through playlists and algorithms but does not provide deep podcast community engagement features.Spotify also offers podcast integration. It excels in personalized playlists and algorithm-driven recommendations. However, podcast-specific features are somewhat limited compared to dedicated podcast apps.
Apple Music: While primarily a music streaming platform, Apple Music has started to integrate podcasts. It focuses on seamless content transition between music and podcasts.
Key Takeaways:
Music streaming apps prioritize seamless integration between music and podcasts.
Podcast-specific community and engagement features are typically limited.
Apple Podcasts: Apple Podcasts provides a vast library of podcasts, but its social features are limited. User reviews and ratings help with content discovery to some extent.
Key Takeaways:
Personalization and content recommendations are strong points in general podcast applications.
Social and community features are often less prominent or lacking.
3. Music Streaming Applications:
Spotify: As mentioned earlier, Spotify offers both music and podcast content. It excels in music discovery through playlists and algorithms but does not provide deep podcast community engagement features.Spotify also offers podcast integration. It excels in personalized playlists and algorithm-driven recommendations. However, podcast-specific features are somewhat limited compared to dedicated podcast apps.
Apple Music: While primarily a music streaming platform, Apple Music has started to integrate podcasts. It focuses on seamless content transition between music and podcasts.
Key Takeaways:
Music streaming apps prioritize seamless integration between music and podcasts.
Podcast-specific community and engagement features are typically limited.
Insights
Community Engagement: Crime podcast apps like My Favorite Murder and Casefile excel in fostering community engagement through forums and discussions. This indicates a strong desire among listeners to interact and discuss content.
Content Discovery: General podcast apps like Spotify emphasize personalization and algorithm-driven content recommendations. This approach helps users discover new podcasts and episodes tailored to their interests.
Multimedia and Deep Dives: Some crime podcast apps, like Casefile, provide additional multimedia content such as crime scene photos and detailed episode descriptions, catering to users who want in-depth information.
Seamless Integration: Music streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music focus on creating a seamless transition between music and podcasts, recognizing that many users enjoy both forms of audio content.
Goals
To achieve the JTBD, I started to think big — how can we deliver value of entertaining podcasts that are live today, while positioning it to grow with the fan-base in the future. I consulted with multiple teams within Studio Science to help identify new use cases that we might have missed if we had focused solely on short-term gains. This way of thinking allowed us to design a product that not only solved current problems but also had the potential to evolve and adapt as technology and user needs continue to change.
Defining User Goals into tasks
Wireframing
Wireframes
Wireframes were created in Balsamic and were sent to the client for feedback. We had real-time testing with 5 users and iterative feedback with clients for 100+ minutes that were incorporated into the design.
Design System
The existing logo was designed by freelance designers and we wanted to retain as it had connected with the fans. The design system was designed around the theme and palette extracted from the logo.
Final Design
Success Metrics
