Redesign of Podcast Website

For Schneps Media

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Client

Schneps Media owns and operate more than 50 print and online news services.

Tools

  • Figma

  • Wordpress

  • Powerpoint

My Role

Product Designer - Led end-to-end product strategy, comprehensive user research, interaction design, and visual branding to establish a premier audio streaming platform.

Project Time

3 Months

Background

Schneps Media operates over 50 prominent print and digital news properties. To capitalize on the rapidly growing audio market, they launched a centralized digital hub designed to aggregate and showcase their expanding portfolio of podcasts.

The Challenge

The initial podcast platform suffered from severe structural and engagement issues, primarily because it inherited a legacy editorial framework unsuited for audio consumption.

  • Information architecture mimicked standard article layouts, obstructing audio discovery.

  • Navigation was highly unintuitive for streaming content.

  • Visual design lacked brand distinctiveness and emotional resonance.

  • Content creators lacked standardized uploading workflows, leading to metadata fragmentation.

  • The absence of a responsive mobile architecture alienated the primary podcast demographic.

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Research Strategy

To establish a holistic understanding of the ecosystem, I engineered a dual-pronged research methodology targeting both the end-listeners (content consumers) and the podcast producers (content uploaders).

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User Insights & Discovery

Qualitative interviews revealed critical friction points across both user segments. Listeners felt the interface was fundamentally misaligned with an audio-first experience, leading to high abandonment rates during episode discovery. Simultaneously, content creators expressed severe frustration over the lack of standardized publishing protocols, which directly resulted in fragmented and inconsistent platform uploads.

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Strategic Synthesis

Critical Pain Points

  • Fragmented discovery and lack of a cohesive audio ecosystem.

  • High cognitive load required to locate specific series or episodes.

User Motivations

  • Desire for seamless, frictionless streaming typical of modern media platforms.

  • Need for an immersive aesthetic that distinguishes audio from standard editorial reading.

Business Opportunities

  • A modernized, audio-first UX directly correlates to increased listener retention and organic growth through advocacy.

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Target Audience Strategy

Synthesizing quantitative Google Analytics data with qualitative interview insights, I developed a core listener archetype.

  • This persona accurately represented the high-engagement demographic critical to platform growth.

  • It served as a constant strategic anchor throughout the product lifecycle.

  • By centering the persona's core needs, I was able to confidently prioritize features that delivered immediate value to our most active users.

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Competitive Analysis

I conducted a rigorous competitive audit of industry-leading audio platforms. By dissecting varied approaches to audio visualization, player mechanics, and content discovery, I established a baseline for market expectations and identified strategic gaps where Schneps Media could innovate.

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Strategic Hypothesis

By overhauling the platform's information architecture, introducing an audio-first interface, and standardizing creator upload protocols, I hypothesized we could significantly reduce cognitive friction. This holistic enhancement would inherently drive higher organic traffic, increase episode completion rates, and foster a more engaged listener base.

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Feature Prioritization & Scope

Transitioning from research to execution, I led a rigorous feature prioritization exercise, mapping proposed functionalities against user value and engineering feasibility to define a high-impact MVP.

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The Solution

  • Architect a robust, scalable audio platform built on WordPress.

  • Design a modern, audio-first design system to elevate the existing brand.

  • Engineer intuitive, low-friction user flows optimized for content discovery and playback.

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Feature Comparison

I benchmarked my proposed architectural solutions against major market competitors, validating that our feature set not only met baseline streaming expectations but also delivered distinct advantages in specialized content discovery.

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Structural Wireframing

  • Initial low-fidelity explorations focused purely on structural hierarchy and content mapping.

  • Direct user feedback continuously refined the placement of primary navigation and playback controls.

  • After iterating through multiple architectural concepts, I established a core structural foundation.

  • The final framework successfully established a cohesive triad: Home Hub, Series Detail, and Episode Playback.

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High-Fidelity Prototyping

Translating structural wireframes into high-fidelity designs required balancing aesthetics with utility.

  • The layout strictly adheres to the validated structural hierarchy.

  • Visual styling leverages the Schneps Media brand palette to build immediate trust.

  • The UI is unapologetically audio-first, heavily utilizing negative space to emphasize album art and playback controls.

  • A dynamic hero marquee guarantees maximum visibility for the newest and highest-performing series.


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Final Desktop Architecture

Following rigorous usability testing and iterative refinement, I finalized the desktop component architecture in Figma.

  • Strategic use of brand tokens ensures a premium, cohesive aesthetic.

  • The persistent playback interface mirrors industry-standard audio controls, eliminating learning curves.

  • Tactile micro-interactions and elevated components provide deep structural meaning to user actions.

  • A robust episode taxonomy and numbering schema significantly accelerates deep-catalog discovery.

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Final Mobile Architecture

Recognizing the inherently mobile nature of podcast consumption, I engineered a fully responsive, native-feeling mobile experience.

  • The mobile UI delivers a seamless, app-like ecosystem, ensuring feature parity with desktop while optimizing for one-handed thumb navigation.

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Strategic Retrospective

This initiative proved that migrating into new media verticals requires more than just new content; it demands a purpose-built user experience. While the visual overhaul was substantial, the true success of this project lay in foundational research and restructuring the information architecture. An aesthetically pleasing interface is secondary to intuitive, frictionless content delivery.

  • My primary takeaway was mastering the unique UX paradigms of audio streaming, and understanding how visual hierarchy must adapt to support, rather than compete with, auditory consumption.