Quest

We came up with this idea during an iteration of our earlier version of Quest. During our outreach to multiple types of podcast hosts we asked them about using this new idea for their podcast, several hosts who currently run a podcast indicated they would use it to get contributions from their listeners. They have a ton of reach already and distribution through their current audience could be great for to get a lot response.

That was for us reason enough to create a first version of a minimal valuable product. We decided to built and design this together.

Sketches

I always start with sketching my first ideas. Just to get my ideas out of my head and show it to my collegues. My first idea was to only show to have tab bar between the player and the inputfield where could ask questions. But we saw really fast that we could combine it on the same page.

So the concept of our product was that a podcast host has his own podcast page where they have two different sections: all their episodes and a way for them to ask questions. To combine those two on one page was for me the biggest design challenge.

Design iterations

We were building and designing our new product at the same time. I brainstormed a lot together with the whole team. Developers and founders included. Based on their input and created different versions of the podcast page. Along the way we decided as a team to only focus on asking question from the listeners. So we could execute our idea earlier and always add it later when our product was a succes.

Prototype

User research

Before launching our mvp to the first podcast hosts, we wanted it to test it with 5 podcast hosts and 5 podcasts listeners. I wrote down two goals for the different target audience:

• Hosts: Identify how podcast hosts interact with their audience right now.

• Listeners: Finding painpoints in the flow of the listeners.

Most important findings:

1. Hosts:

• Many of the hosts that we spoke to think that it is very important to have interaction with their listeners.

• Most of the hosts mentioned that they would like to use Quest but they said they would not if users had to sign up for the service. He thought that would result in too much friction compared to channels like Mail, Instagram, Twitter or Whatsapp.

• Most of the hosts more than one channel to ask for input. For example: Mail, Twitter, Instagram or Whatsapp.

2. Listeners:

• Listeners are looking for more interaction with the podcasts that they listen to. Now they have to look if they have to do that on Instagram, Twitter or Mail.

• The current design feels a bit too much like an open-ended forum. It could be nice to have different “post types” such as a poll or certain topics to react to. Listeners also said that it would be good if the host, who they have a connection with, nudges them to leave a reply.

• Initially, users said they don’t like signing up for the service in order to leave a reply.

• However, listeners also said they don’t mind signing up for the service if that means that they receive an e-mail when there is a response to their reply. Especially if it is a response from the host.

Final result

The most important feedback and for us the biggest win was that we needed to change the flow for the listeners to leave a reply. We asked them them to create an account when they hit the reply button, but during our user test all of them said that they wanted to leave the page because of creating an account was required.

We decided to change it and only ask for your name and email. So we could sent them updates and ask later to the user to create an account. When we changed this, we succesfully launched it with a Dutch podcast named POM. They gathered 50 replies within 12 hours on posts created with Quest. This resulted in an hour long episode featuring clips and replies from Quest users.