Podcast App

This project explored how to combine podcast listening with a lightweight social layer that brings audiences and creators together. Alongside standard features like following, listening and queueing episodes, the app introduced community interactions, comments, likes, clips, AMAs, polls, to help listeners engage with each other and with podcasters.

I led all UX and UI design and built the initial React Native prototype.

Podcast discovery is passive and slow. Listeners struggle to find new shows, creators struggle to foster community and most apps isolate listening from social interaction.

The product aimed to solve this by:

• adding community features directly into the listening experience
• making discovery active and dynamic, powered by social signals
• giving creators a place to interact with their audience
• letting listeners explore podcasts through generated previews

1. Define the structure

We shaped the product around three pillars:

• Listen — follow shows, play episodes, build a queue
• Engage — like, comment, vote, ask questions, join AMAs
• Discover — scroll through a feed of episode previews generated from transcripts or metadata

These pillars guided the app’s navigation, interaction model and UI.

2. Design the core listening experience

I designed flows for:

• following shows and creators
• playing episodes
• queue management
• lightweight interactions (likes, clips, shares) in the player
• episode detail screens with discussion threads

The player UI was built around clarity and quick actions.

3. Add the community layer

To bring listeners together, I designed:

• episode-level comment threads
• simple upvotes and reactions
• AMA boards where creators could answer listener questions
• quick clip creation (highlight → clip) for sharing moments
• basic user profiles

4. Build a dynamic discovery feed

The Discovery tab used episode metadata or auto-generated previews to create:

• short audio snippets
• teaser cards
• simple episode summaries
• quick “add to queue” actions

5. Prototype the full app

I created a high-fidelity Figma prototype and a functional React Native front-end to test:

• onboarding
• feed behaviour
• player interactions
• comment flows
• queue management

This allowed for early testing of engagement ideas and feed behaviour.

• Full UX and UI for the MVP
• Working React Native prototype covering core flows
• A cohesive product concept combining listening, discovery and social features
• Clear direction for future feature prioritisation