Entale

MOBILE APP

AI podcast discovery app

OVERVIEW

The Entale Podcast App introduced an innovative approach to podcasting by integrating interactive and visual elements into episodes, enhancing user engagement and storytelling.

The platform featured personalised listening recommendations, user-created clips (Snippets) and pinned bookmarked content (Collections), plus many more user-centric features.

OUTCOMES

2x

3x

Onboarding completion rates to creating a collection - from 25% to 50%.

Engagement with Snippets, a pivot from the original pre-defined audio clips known as the ‘Chapters’ feature.

THE PROJECT

The Startup:

Product Design Lead (Me)
Founder
Co-founder & CPO
Co-founder & CEO
CTO
Senior Backend Developer
Data Scientist

Core feature - the player:

At Entale, I enhanced UX with seamless vertical scrolling of content utilising GI.N.A (GInormous eNtity Analyser) technology to enrich podcasts with context - turning passive listening into an interactive experience. This strategy set Entale apart, optimising screen use to boost user engagement, session duration, and interactions

Activating users:

Enhancing the onboarding experience and clearly communicating our value proposition was paramount. Through exhaustive user testing, I pinpointed and introduced features users most desired, significantly enhancing initial app interactions. This strategy boosted feature awareness and retention, with innovative methods such as floating action buttons clarifying Entale's unique selling points, doubling onboarding completion rates and deepening platform engagement.

User Testing:

I spearheaded strategic user testing using the UniTaskr platform, targeting tech-savvy students. Through careful screening, we involved true podcast fans for unbiased feedback, shaping user personas and design improvements. This honed our value proposition and user experience, aligning updates with audience preferences.

Home Improvements:

I revamped Entale's home screen into a dynamic, user-centric interface with vibrant gradients, modern icons, and a streamlined layout. By introducing RSS feeds and sections like 'Best on Entale' and 'Discover,' alongside a tabbed experience based on user feedback, we significantly enhanced content discovery and personalisation.

Turning Problems into Wins:

Leading Entale's UX evolution, I tackled the 'Chapters' feature confusion by pivoting to 'Snippets,' through detailed user research and iterative design, allowing personal audio clip creation and sharing. This significant change improved user engagement by offering more content control and marked a major advance in podcast interaction. 'Snippets' resolved context and integration issues with 'Chapters,' significantly enhancing the user experience and tripling engagement levels, showcasing a leap forward in interactive capabilities.

Collections & Widgets:

I transformed bookmarking into 'Collections'—a more interactive, Pinterest-inspired experience. We leveraged AI for content discovery, letting users save/share curated podcasts, enriching social engagement. Tirelessly, I developed 'Widgets,' employing AI to reveal related content (films, social profiles, Amazon books), enhancing user interaction with additional content. These innovations not only made podcast listening more social and engaging but also underscored our value proposition by markedly boosting engagement with supplementary material.

Post-award Re-brand:

Post-Webby win, I spearheaded Entale's rebranding, aiming for a unique aesthetic departure from typical podcast apps by focusing on visual storytelling. We adopted a vibrant, expressive brand identity with flat colours and off-grid designs, incorporating discovery metaphors to embody curiosity and enrich the podcast experience, enhancing user engagement.

THREE BIG TAKE-AWAYS

1/ Creating the rabbit hole

Leveraging AI to suggest content based on listening habits, significantly enhanced user engagement. This allowed users to go ‘down-the-rabbit-hole’ and discover other episodes and podcasts related to the same content. Upon discovering new artefacts they could bookmark these items and curate a ‘Collection’ to satisfy their new found curiosity.

Widgets

Initially, users engaged 30-50% of their listening time with manually created extra content. We then automated this, scaling it via RSS with AI to detect content automatically, enhancing scalability and engagement. A study helped us target preferred content types—music, TV shows/films, and books. Leveraging IMDb, we offered trailers, reviews, and streaming options, plus recommending podcasts mentioning similar topics, enriching the listening experience with active discovery based on user interests.

Collections

We introduced users to unique links and chapters, hypothesizing that personalisation would encourage return visits due to effort investment and sunk-cost fallacy. Launching a Pinterest-style 'Collections' for saving favourite audio and content doubled retention rates compared to non-users. By featuring social profiles, film trailers, and books for saving and following, we added a social aspect to the feature, leading to users creating and sharing collections on diverse topics, enhancing community engagement.

2/ User-centric approach

The pivot to 'Snippets' was a steadfast commitment to our user-centric design approach. We iterated to personalised audio curation based on user feedback from Chapters. We significantly boosted engagement, satisfaction, and allowed every ‘Snippet’ interaction to create a unique moment.

User’s reactions

Validation: Can skip to interesting stuff instead of listening to the whole thing, use chapters as teasers for recommended episodes, a way to soundbite things, trending chapters are useful as crowdsourced interesting chapters and more likely to get you to listen to a podcast that you’ve not listened to before.

Resistance: - Confusion about what you’re listening to, confusion about swiping left/right to navigate different chapters, seeing chapters in search results is unexpected, as a level it’s too granular.

Snippet Iteration

User feedback revealed a preference for customising sound bite lengths over pre-selected chapters. Initially, we tested a horizontal scroll 'clip' feature using basic iOS components, akin to voice notes. However, users sought finer control, prompting us to introduce a horizontal waveform with draggable endpoints for selecting clip lengths. Usability tests guided us to develop a vertical scroll experience, enabling users to create audio clips up to 15 minutes, aligning with their desire for greater personalisation and control.

3/ Onboarding and Activation

Navigating user activation was an ongoing challenge, persistently tackled across every iteration of Entale. Through relentless refinement and user testing, we successfully enhanced onboarding, doubling completion rates and deeply engaging users with the platform's unique features.

Onboarding Iterations

Over the course of my tenure we tried everything from swiping through static product shots, unskippable video explainters to event-triggered lottie animations to help communicate our value proposition. Previous iterations had been front-loaded with too much information - the key was for users fast track users into the experience. After onboarding, we introduced other features via an event-driven checklist which allowed users to become familiar with natural exploration and persistent progress indicator.

Activation Prototypes

We tested different methods of activation including an assistant and an inbox based system. However, a floating action button, tested the best as it introduced new features and passively reminded unexplored features. We allow users to jump into features using the list accessed from the FAB, and then present simple tooltips to help understand core features. Based on these changes, nearly 50% of users completed onboarding and we saw big improvements in retention and understanding of the unique selling points of our product

REFLECTION

Success

Innovative Podcast Experience: Entale revolutionised podcasting by adding interactive and visual elements, enriching storytelling and boosting listener retention.

User Engagement and Personalisation: Our focus on personalisation tripled engagement with user-created clips and doubled onboarding completion, proving the app's effectiveness in creating a more immersive, customised listening journey.

Design & Brand Evolution: Our UI rebranding and design evolution distinguished Entale in a competitive market, with personalisation features and a unique editorial brand identity marking our standout presence.

Adapting to Challenges

UI/UX Optimisation - By introducing vertical scrolling and a scrubber, we moved beyond traditional podcast norms, creating a more interactive experience that encouraged discovery, significantly changing media interaction.

Content Discovery and Personalisation - Facing retention issues with our RSS integration, we shifted from manual curation to an AI-driven entity recognition engine, enhancing content relevance and satisfaction by tailoring suggestions to listening habits.

Onboarding and Activation - Our initial onboarding struggled to communicate our value proposition. Recognising the need to engage users, we ditched static screenshots and skippable videos and focused on showcasing the app’s unique features, like social profiles of the speaker and access to related content, sparking curiosity and improving user engagement.

Lessons Learnt

User Testing Strategy
Regular, in-depth user testing shaped our app’s design and features, with feedback helping to understand user psychographics, test new features, and build a community of advocates.

Balancing Innovation with Parity
We introduced innovative features while maintaining essential podcast functionalities like speed listening, mark episodes as played, and sleep timers, merging innovation with familiarity for seamless user integration.

Effective Brand Evolution
Our rebranding showcased the importance of a dynamic visual identity in a crowded market. Transforming Entale into an engaging platform demonstrated the impact of brand evolution in attracting and retaining a dedicated audience.

Skills Developed

User-centric Design: My rigorous user testing refined our approach, enhancing performance metrics and fostering innovation, demonstrating the impact of user-focused design on exploring new possibilities.

Strategic Product Development: Leading the app from it’s clunky first iteration to a significant brand repositioning honed my strategy skills, aligning with market needs to achieve product-market fit.

Brand Development: Evolving the app's identity highlighted the importance of a bold, adaptable brand in standing out digitally, with choices like serif fonts marking our pioneering spirit.

Innovative Thinking: Pioneering visual and interactive podcasting elements broadened my innovation skills, challenging traditional content consumption norms.