OUR CLIENT
The Philadelphia Inquirer 🗞️
Is the largest newspaper circulation in the Philadelphia area with 120k daily active users, providing well-researched information from the field to the public since 1829. They are looking to adapt with different user needs by exploring audio entertainment formats.
PROJECT SCOPE
How might we best serve Philadelphians with a preference for audio, whether that's situational (they're in the car right now) or in all cases (they prefer listening to reading)?
***
→ In essence, what would a holistic audio experience look like?
DISCLAIMER
We’re prototyping and doing most of our work via the iPhone SE
This semester, we focused on content development and concept for an audio feature. Such a large scope required some narrowing, so we filtered out scaling, inspiring us to design at the bottom: the SE model.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
We looked at 15 competitors...
This is what we found to be integral to the audio experience:
Queues / Playlists
Timestamps
Lyric Tracking
Transcript Highlights
Personalized News Content
Discover Page
Lyric Tracking
Audio Entry Points
Widgets
USER RESEARCH
We conducted 25+ User Interviews
Pain Points
Falling into filter bubbles
Feeling that news is perpetual
Lack of time to read full articles
Multitasking News Consumer: Millenial
Persona 1
Thomas Ellis
Project Manager
Goals
Multitasking on-the-go
Uninterrupted audio experience
In-depth news consumption
Pain Points
Short attention span
Hard to find digestible news
Lack of audio, visuals, and text
Goals
Stay informed without much effort
Personalized + trustworthy news
Keep up to date via social media
Selective News Navigator: Gen Z
Persona 2
Sydney Lee
College Student
Now Introducing …
OUR DESIGN STRATEGY
We wanted to make sure that this audio feature proposal is as holistic as possible. Using frequent feedback and thinking of the experience as a whole, we aligned our values as such:
Consistency to build trust
Balance design with business needs, justified by current data
Consider all kinds of audiences
TIMELINE
Feb - May 2025
11 weeks
ROLE
Project Manager
TEAM
2 Project Managers
7 Design Consultants
SKILLS
Agile Methodologies, Product Thinking, Visual Design, Market/User Research
CONTEXT
As a Project Manager, I set the strategic direction through an 11-week Agile sprint roadmap to design what a holistic audio experience could look like for various users on the Inquirer’s mobile app. While communicating biweekly with stakeholders to align business goals, technical feasibility, and design considerations, I also led visual designs of the pre-set audio playlists and my queues.
Evelyn Kim
Project Manager
Vannessa Wong
Project Manager
Will Pan
Junior Designer
Annica Bartolome
Junior Designer
Lucy Bazezy
Junior Designer
Reinesse Wong
Senior Designer
Matthew Hope
Senior Designer
Wen Yu Chen
Senior Designer
Keira Huffman
Junior Designer
👏🏼 We would like to thank the team at The Philadelphia Inquirer for showing their passion of working with students and constantly providing their support through feedback and professional development opportunities — notably visiting the Philly office!
OUR TEAM
🌟 This is concept work created in PARTNERSHIP with The Philadelphia Inquirer. This project is exploratory and does NOT reflect the current Inquirer design and branding.
Mobile Morning Digest
Mobile integration mirrors and enhances pre-existing web and email newsletter experiences
Morning Digest Mobile Integration
We noticed that Inquirer currently sends morning newsletters via email to subscribed users and our users consume specific content based on time and routine, however these routine-specific and subscription-based experiences are often inaccessible in the app.
Existing web morning digest
Settings Page
While users navigate to the Settings, there lacks a clear hierarchy of features. Therefore, we wanted to reorganize the existing layout to highlight audio-focused features.
Settings
Access “My Queues” & the current article to read
Find recently read & listened to articles
Customize the news seen on the home page
Audio customization
Recently read
FEATURE SHOWCASE
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Audio
a holistic approach to introducing audio and more into the Philadelphia Inquirer’s current platform.
Search Proposal
When searching for an article, users want relevant results without scrolling aimlessly. The current search is not easily accessible, has no filters, and is organized in an overwhelming structure.
New Search Bar
Keyword highlighting
Tools to narrow down results
Clear and organized UI for less visual overload
Filter Option
Filter results by date and section for more targeted results
Daily renewed content
User demand for situation-dependent news topics
News
Sports
Business
Opinion
Politics
Entertainment
Food
Health
Real Estate
Obituaries
Jobs
Life
Philly First
Past 24 Hours
Past 7 Days
Past Month
Custom Dates
Pivoted Feature
Transcripts
OUR AIM
In situations where users prefer to read along as they listen to articles, we initially created a transcript pop-up that could be accessed by swiping up on the audio player.
HOWEVER
After receiving crit from the Inquirer design team, we realized that seeing two of the same article text is confusing to the user: one in the pop up and the other as the actual article.
IN THE END
We went with tracking the text in the actual article using highlights that are easy to follow with accessible customizable speed controls, as many users prefer to skim and listen faster than they read.
Transcript collapsed version (draft)
Customized speech speed buttons
Transcript
Follow-along highlight
Customizable speech speed
Cross Device Integration
We found that our users want to multitask with on-the-go audio summaries, especially during their morning commute. However, it is dangerous (and illegal) to use your phone while driving and it might be repetitive to have to access audio from the app exclusively.
Carplay home page UI
Carplay
Seamless integration from news consumption history to car
Consuming audio while on the go requires no mobile device interaction
News related to user habits is immediately visible
Glanceable signifiers for text-heavy content
Onboarding
Since we explored the new integration of audio, which the current Inquirer app does not have, we wanted to summarize all proposed features in a quick, introductory format.
Home Page
Millennial and Gen Z users want to have an overview of the current news topics they care about, however the current Inquirer app lacks clear article categories, personalization, and there is no easy access to the search bar.
Navigation Bar
Navigation and search bar
Filter homepage by preferences
Easy access to the search bar
Content Layout
Horizontal scroll for more current news
Headlines emphasized and listening durations are incorporated
Categories more clear
License plates for easy access to other features
sports summary license plate
Audio Only Page
OUR AIM
We found that Millennial and Gen Z users want an uninterrupted and hands-free listening experience, therefore we initially created an audio-only page, similar to other news platforms, that house all audio content in one convenient place and the option to create customized playlists, similar to Spotify.
HOWEVER
After receiving crit from the Inquirer design team, we were to assume that articles WILL have audio, removing the need for an audio-only page.
We also raised the question of “What would happen to the articles I already listened to and don’t want in my playlist anymore?” We had to understand that this audio experience differs from music, which we were taking inspiration from, where users rarely re-listen to the news and therefore would be more work for them to create separate playlists.
IN THE END
We designed a single, “My Queues” playlist, in which users can add articles to this queue, the next one in the queue auto-plays, and automatically deletes from the queue once it is listened to, in order to reduce article pile up and support a holistic listening experience.
My Queues
Access all queues in ONE playlist
Auto-play next in queue
Deletes from queue after listen (reduces article pile up)
Sports Audio Player
Live score
Big play notifications
Audio play-by-play
Pivoted Feature
FYP Proposal
We found that many users want curated relevant news recommendations, however the current Inquirer app lacks discovery of personalized content and the drop downs create an overload of category information.
Pre-set Audio Playlist
Pre-set categories (ex. Sunny Stories & Deep Dives)
Daily renewed content
User demand for situation-dependent news topics
Philly For You
Scrollable news consumption
Daily renewed content
Fast access (click, share, and save) to recommended articles
Includes onboarding to entire FYP during first time on the feature
FYP Discovery Scroll
Curated For You (Philly For You, My Queues, Sunny Stories, Deep Dives)
Top Picks For You
Recommended in top categories
Dive back in (audio carousel)
View more for categories
view more widget
dive back in widget
Interest Button
Modal menu button
Bookmark, share, and add to queue
Utilize algorithm to remove unwanted recommendations
©
2025
| Evelyn Chaewon Kim
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