I like to binge listen to podcasts, especially in the winter I go for one or two walks every day for a total of two hours, which enables me to listen to 2 to 3 podcasts at normal or 150% speed.
I’m nevertheless frustrated by the design of podcast apps.
For example Apple’s own podcast app. It has 4 sections:
Listen Now, Library, Browse and Search. Here is my 2 cents about them.
Listen Now:
- impossible to understand how this is ordered.
- There is no way to reorder it.
- The icon shows “Listen Now”, whereas Audible displays directly the cover of the book there, which I find better
- “Up Next” goes from top to bottom, but I do see a banner at the bottom showing what’s currently playing, so it just does not make sense: a show is shown “next” on third position whereas that’s exactly what I’m currently listening to.
Library
- Such. a. mess.
- Why separate episodes and downloaded episodes? For example spotify enables me to filter a list and activate the option “downloaded” or not.
- Some elements are translated in my language, others are not:
- “The most recent” and “All non read”
- Why not a simple sorting and filter bar on top, helping me
- sort by most recent, popular, listened to
- filter by play status (not yet played, not finished, finished)
- filter by downloaded or not.
- And why counters on most recent and non read but no counters on shows and episodes?
Library > Shows
- Why just the “album” view?
- I can sort by date added, title, manual
- Why not sort by popularity, or my most listened to?
Indeed, I added a bunch of podcasts that I want to remember but don’t listen to regularly, and others are my favourites, it’s impossible to distinguish both easily. - Why not filter by downloaded or not, or by country?
Browse
- there is no possibility to explore the podcasts of another country (currated list and rankings), whereas I like to hear podcasts from the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain…
- Why so much space on top of the title? So much lost space for nothing.
- And really you recommend me twice to listen to this Hygge Magazin?
- What’s the difference between “Featured” and “News & Noteworthy” ? Apparently none if you start with the same recommendation.
Search
- I have to go to search, to search in my library, but… if I go to my library, there is no search function.
- All in all, this feels soooooo messy.
Show View
- I see 2 times the play button…
- There is no differentiation between an episode I played and an episode I haven’t played yet.
- I cannot “like” an episode, I cannot see how many other people liked a show or an episode.
- Why not enable people to like podcasts???
Episode View
- When I am on a podcast episode, it’s super hard to find how to go from an episode to a show, you would guess that clicking on the show could bring you to the show? It doesn’t.
- Actually, I don’t even understand why you would enable users to have an episode view where there is litterally no additional information compared to the show view.
- Hard to find how to go from a podcast episode to the show
- Oh and big frustration too: I cannot broadcast to my Alexa speakers
Episode View > …
- I see soooo many options, they are useful but isn’t it too much?
Oh and also:
If close and reopen the app, sometimes it starts another podcast that I may have saved but just don’t listen to, and I have to look for the podcast I was really listening, very frustrating.
There is no history function, like on youtube.
There is no grouping function either. Wish I could group podcasts (business, culture, by language…)
And If I listen to a podcast on my headphone then ask siri something my apple watch, the podcast stops and doesn’t continue playing automatically after my request, not ideal.
All in all, so many bad things that make me want to switch to another app to discover and listen to podcasts.