Audio-first learning, on the commute
An audio summaries app for people who want the substance of a long read in the length of a drive. I designed the full listening experience — discovery, player, queue, offline library and the subscription flow behind it.
The problem
Audio apps live or die on the first ninety seconds. Early testing showed people opened the app, saw a wall of categories, and closed it without playing anything. The product had a strong catalogue and no obvious way in.
The work
Ran a competitive teardown of eight audio and podcast apps to map what listeners already expect a player to do — and where the conventions could safely be broken.
Rebuilt the home screen around one decision instead of many: a single 'ready to play' card sized to the time the listener actually has.
Designed the player as a persistent mini-bar so navigating the catalogue never interrupts playback — the single most requested behaviour in testing.
Mapped the download and offline states end to end, including the partial-download and expired-licence cases nobody had specced.
Prototyped the paywall three ways and tested which framing people understood fastest before a line of it was built.
Key decisions
Every project has a handful of decisions that shaped everything after them. These were this project's.
Content is surfaced by how long the listener has — 5, 15 or 30 minutes — instead of by category. It matches how people actually decide what to play.
Mini-player, expanded player and lock-screen controls were designed as one component with three sizes, so state is never lost between them.
Downloading, downloaded, paused, failed and expired each got a real design. Listeners on a train know exactly what they can still play.
Files were handed over annotated and component-based, with a live walkthrough for the engineering team.
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Tell me what is not working. I will tell you honestly whether design is the right lever and what I would do in the first two weeks.
madnansakhi@gmail.com