A little more room to listen.
This case study isn’t available on mobile yet. I’m still fine-tuning the experience for smaller screens.
Come back on desktop.Explore my portfolioSAME CURIOSITY. BIGGER CANVAS.
A UX redesign of Castbox focused on uncovering opportunities to improve podcast discovery and social engagement, from user research and heuristic evaluation to actionable insights, and UI solutions.
UX Researcher & Product Designer · 3-person team, mentor-guided
I contributed to user research, UX strategy, and UI design, with a focus on synthesizing user research, uncovering behavioral insights, connecting UX opportunities to business metrics, and translating findings into UI solutions.
Designers
Mentor
Castbox is a global podcast and spoken-audio platform founded in 2016 by Renee Wang. It helps users discover, listen to, and interact with podcasts, audiobooks, radio content, and other spoken-audio formats across mobile, web, smart speakers, and in-car systems.
10+ million
Downloads
35+ million
Global Users
95+ million
Pieces of Content
4.9
Rating
Research findings that explain why listener-to-creator engagement remains low on Castbox.
Most users listen while commuting, working, or exercising, making active participation less likely.
Listeners feel connected to podcast hosts but lack opportunities for meaningful interaction.
Many podcast discussions continue on Reddit, Instagram, Discord, and other social platforms.
Users who feel part of a community are more likely to return and stay engaged.
“Castbox successfully delivers content, but lacks the community infrastructure needed to transform passive listeners into active participants.”
To understand how people discover podcasts, build relationships with creators, and interact with podcast communities, we conducted semi-structured interviews with active podcast listeners. Rather than validating assumptions, our goal was to uncover real behaviors, motivations, frustrations, and communication patterns that shape the listening experience.
I wanted to know when the next episode would be released.
I usually discover podcasts through Instagram.
I rarely leave comments.
Podcasts fit naturally into my daily routine.
Users choose podcasts based on both content quality and the credibility of the creator. The host's voice, style, personality, and expertise strongly influence listening decisions.
The host and producer matter a lot. I need to connect with their voice, the way they speak, and their knowledge. I can't choose between the content and the host because both are equally important.
Podcast listening is deeply integrated into everyday routines. Users expect an uninterrupted background listening experience with minimal interaction.
Podcasts naturally become part of my day because I can listen while doing other things.
Most podcast discovery happens through conversations, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, or recommendations from friends — not inside the app.
I usually discover new podcasts through social media.
Sensitive topics discourage users from participating publicly because they fear judgment from others.
I wanted to comment, but the topic felt too personal.
Many users consume community content for reliable information rather than contributing their own perspectives.
I read comments to decide whether an episode is worth my time.
Because Castbox only supports basic comments, users move discussions to personal communities and messaging apps.
Interaction is mostly limited to comments. It never becomes a real conversation.
Two behavioral archetypes helped the team keep discovery and participation needs grounded in real listening contexts.
Intentional Listener
Needs
Support for discovering content aligned with her learning interests
Tools to save, highlight, and revisit key parts of episodes
Opportunities to discuss and share valuable content with like-minded people
Hannah uses podcasts as a companion to her everyday activities. She values a seamless, frictionless listening experience and prefers to simply press play and continue with her day, without needing to interact much with the app or make additional decisions while listening.
Background Listener
Needs
Stable background playback during daily activities
Automatic episode continuation and easy playlist management
Easy playlist management
Hannah uses podcasts as a companion to her everyday activities. She values a seamless, frictionless listening experience and prefers to simply press play and continue with her day, without needing to interact much with the app or make additional decisions while listening.
Five UX evaluators independently evaluated Castbox using Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics across five key community-related user tasks.
110 issues across 5 evaluators
Users have very limited visibility into community activity before starting an episode. Comment previews are minimal, discussion quality is unclear, and there are few signals indicating whether an episode has an active or valuable conversation.
Impact
Users cannot easily evaluate if an episode is worth engaging with, reducing both content discovery and community participation.
Recommendation
Expose richer community signals before playback, including discussion previews, active participant counts, highlighted comments, and creator activity.
The current commenting experience is limited to basic text replies. Users cannot easily build conversations, follow discussions, recognize active contributors, or interact with creators in meaningful ways.
Impact
Conversations quickly stop after a few comments, pushing users toward Telegram, Instagram, Reddit, or other platforms where deeper interactions already happen.
Recommendation
Transform comments into a true community space by supporting threaded conversations, creator participation, likes, mentions, community badges, and richer discussion features.
Spotify
Unified Audio Ecosystem
Competitive Edge
Shared Experiences
Collaborative listening is built into the product across a spectrum of social moments.
Unified Audio Feed
Music, podcasts, and audiobooks are managed within one seamless listening experience.
YouTube
Video & Discovery
Competitive Edge
Video Integration
The industry leader for video podcasts, enabling users to switch seamlessly between watching and listening.
Algorithmic Discovery
Powerful recommendations surface relevant clips, segments, and new shows based on viewing behavior.
Massive Comment Culture
Highly active discussions transform podcast episodes into shared social experiences where listeners interact directly with creators and other fans.
Apple Podcasts
Native iOS Integration
Competitive Edge
Out-of-the-Box Integration
Pre-installed across the Apple ecosystem with native support for Siri, CarPlay, Apple Watch, and Fitness.
Automatic Resource Management
Intelligently downloads new episodes in the background and manages storage automatically, ensuring offline playback without user effort.
Validated Design Opportunities
Listeners need spaces to connect around episodes without leaving the listening experience. Community should live where content lives.
A visible history of episodes, reactions and participation turns passive listening into meaningful engagement with a record that grows over time.
Surface what trusted voices and peers are listening to as a first-class discovery mechanism, reducing uncertainty for new listeners.
Allow listeners to react to specific moments and timestamps, creating a shared emotional record of episodes that others can explore.
Make it easy to rediscover moments, quotes, and episodes from listening history. What you've heard should remain findable and meaningful.
Strategic Direction
Community should become an integrated layer across discovery, listening and post-listening — instead of existing as a separate destination.
After synthesizing research insights and defining our How Might We questions, we generated dozens of ideas through collaborative brainstorming. Each concept was evaluated based on user value and implementation effort to identify the most valuable opportunities for the MVP.
Instead of leaving the listening flow, users can react, ask questions, and explore community activity directly from the player, creating a seamless and contextual interaction experience.
Allow listeners to instantly react to meaningful podcast moments using lightweight emoji reactions directly from the timeline.
Enable listeners to attach questions to specific timestamps, making discussions contextual and synchronized with the listening experience.
Visualize the most engaging podcast moments through activity markers on the timeline, helping users quickly discover valuable discussions.
User Value
The redesigned player keeps listening as the primary experience while introducing lightweight social interactions. Every action happens within context, allowing users to participate naturally without disrupting playback.
The redesigned Community page brings every social interaction into one dedicated destination. Instead of relying on external platforms, users can explore discussions, connect with creators, participate in conversations and stay engaged within the Castbox ecosystem.
Bring every discussion into one dedicated experience.
Reduce friction and encourage lightweight conversations.
Strengthen the relationship between creators and listeners inside Castbox.
Rationale
The Community page transforms isolated listening into a collaborative experience. By centralizing conversations inside Castbox, users can continue learning, sharing ideas and interacting with creators without switching between multiple platforms.
Q&A creates a dedicated space inside Castbox where listeners can ask questions about an episode and creators can respond directly to them.
The listener selects Q&A and submits a question related to the episode.
The creator receives the question and responds directly.
The answer becomes part of the Community experience and can continue the conversation.
The Community page transforms isolated listening into a collaborative experience. By centralizing conversations inside Castbox, users can continue learning, sharing ideas and interacting with creators without switching between multiple platforms.
Ask questions directly and get answers from the creator.
Respond to audience questions and build a stronger relationship with listeners.
Each stage of the framework represents a crucial phase of the listener's journey, flowing naturally from initial discovery to active community involvement.
The percentage of active users who adopt and use the Community feature within a defined period.
Expected to increase as Community becomes more visible, discoverable, and easier to access from the listening experience.
How frequently users perform meaningful interactions with Community during a selected period.
Expected to increase as the experience creates more opportunities for users to participate in discussions and return to ongoing conversations.
The scale and frequency of active product usage across daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes.
Potential to strengthen active usage by making Community interaction a recurring part of the listening journey.
The percentage of users who continue returning to and using the product over a defined period.
Expected to support retention if Community creates ongoing value and gives users a reason to return beyond listening to individual episodes.
Proposed measurement framework — expected impact, not measured results.
Key insights that shaped the final experience.
Users should understand how to interact without needing to learn the interface first. Clear cues and familiar interaction patterns can make participation easier to discover.
DiscoverabilityReactions, questions and discussions become more useful when they are connected to the exact moment or content the listener is experiencing.
Contextual InteractionA reaction, saved moment, timestamped thought, and full discussion are not competing actions; they are a ladder of participation.
Flexible Participation