Prior to App Home, we lacked a single point of entry into the App experience. This means that starting the customer journey for new customers can be inconsistent and hard to control. For returning customers, the app is not smart about getting customers back to where they left off. For marketing and merchandisers, there is no consistent point of intersection to connect with customers each time they open the app. In October, the app teams will launch the initial foray into App Home.

My Design Process

I followed the standard design process Audible had created as a best practice to make sure that my design decisions were supported by user research and feedback.

Meet Zoe, a 40-year-old Sr. Fashion Buyer for a respectable fashion label and lives in Millburn, NJ with two adorable kids and a hubby. She is highly habituated to Audible and uses the app multiple times per day through various devices. Below illustrates Zoe's behaviors, needs and goals, along with a "day in the life" in more detail.

How We got to Zoe

To start off, we created a provisional persona of a habituated Audible user based on online research and metrics. This was something that we came back to throughout the project to guide our design decisions and priorities. Below are sketches and notes we took during a brainstorm.

Today we lack a single point of entry into the App experience. This means that starting the customer journey for new customers can be inconsistent and hard to control. For returning customers, the app is not smart about getting customers back to where they left off. For marketing and merchandisers there is no consistent point of intersection to connect with customers each time they open the app.

Assumptions of Friction we have Identified:

• As a customer, there is little incentive to frequently visit the app, unless I am listening.
• As a customer I don’t have a single place to start my engagement with the app.
• As a customer I want to easily get back to the last pieces of content I was engaged with.
• As a customer, I don’t understand the difference between Discover, Library and Channels.
•  As a customer, the app feels like a companion to a transactional website, rather than a dynamic end-to-end experience.
• As a customer, I want to know when new content is available (authors, genres, originals, etc.) that interests me.
• As Audible, there’s no way of communicating to the customer in a meaningful way, within X seconds of launching the app.
• As Audible, establish a new platform to deliver a more humanized voice; frequently engage the customer with timely, socially relevant information and ideas worthy of listening.

Ideating a Solution

We will increase engagement by introducing a single destination within the app, where content and information appears based on the customer’s behavior. This concept, which we will call “Home” has surfaced in a number of recent UX design explorations. Home shares DNA with the web/mobile home page Audible customers have grown to trust.

For the Customer

• Get on the right path for trial sign-up when downloading the app for the first time.
• Choose a great first listen based on Amazon purchases or trending titles.
• Start listening to the free book she chose during her trial.
• Jump back into the book/episode she started.
• Drive her towards a listening decision when finished – next book in the series, more like this, more by this author, etc.
•  Save her time by only showing content she is interested in.
• Keep her safe from harm when using the app in a car.
• Make opening the Audible app part of her daily routine whether she has a book in progress or not.
• Build anticipation for the next credit before it arrives, and offer her the option to queue up a book for auto-purchase.
• Remind her of purchases in her library that she hasn’t started/finished.

For the Business

• Drive retention with new interaction model and humanized editorial voice.
• Empower marketing and content programmers to showcase content as a starting point for new customers, without the need for engineering support.
• Drive prospects from campaigns (paid media, email, etc) via deep linking into the apps.
• Drive listening and awareness within seconds of opening the app.
• Provide the initial step towards unifying audiobooks and Channels content in the app by focusing on the characteristics of the content rather than creating unnecessary distinction based on format – e.g., book vs. playlist vs. original.

We want to create a place which encourages users to visit often, hoping to discover something new serendipitously! It should become part of their daily routine. The key is to keep users engaged by offering a constantly fresh stream of content that will encourage them to interact with the app more deeply and consistently. An algorithm integrates one of the following modules, based on where the user is in the customer journey and what they are engaged in.

Module Breakdown

Let's get more granular with these features and modules. As we moved forward, we wanted to specify what features would truly bring value to our users. So we asked ourselves questions that helped define those features.

HOME Wireframes

First concepts of the many different modules that will live within the Home screen. Hero space, Recent Purchase, Jump Back In, Promo and Recommended Content modules. 

Iterative Rollout

As we progress and release updates to Home we wanted to make a major effort on the hero module. The initial release is a static image but we want to iterate to a more dynamic hero where we will introduce video (first time bringing video to the Audible app), content sampling, pagination of multiple heros.