Streamlining Google's Podcast Distribution

I worked on publisher tools for major news organizations and the podcast ecosystem, and created a simple way for publishers to claim and verify ownership of their podcasts on Google.

Once claimed, a publisher’s RSS feed was made available across Google’s surfaces.

ROLE

Lead Product Designer and Co-PM (w/ ENG lead) to determine feature priority & scope

YEAR

2019 - 2020

USERS

Podcasters ranging from independent to major news organizations

Impact

We hit our KPI of 20+ publishers signed up through our early access program, and verified 100+ RSS feeds (beating our KPI of 60+) in month one.

Process

1. Began With User Research

I started by diving into the research our UXR team had done on the podcast ecosystem and found that podcasters represent a range of backgrounds.

Each group from this study asked a similar question: How can I get my content to work across Google's surfaces?

There was no automated way where a publisher could raise their hand to be part of our corpus, except directly with someone at Google.

2. Led a Full-Day Team Workshop

We didn’t have a Product Manager at this point, so we worked as a team to define the product requirements. 

The first thing I tackled was ensuring product, design, and eng were all on the same page. I collaborated with our tech lead to create a full-day design kick off that included the entire team. Senior News Org members flew in from California to add their perspective.

We focused our discussions on the user’s goals and pain points, as well as the business strategy. This helped us understand the current problem, as well as form a vision for 2020 and beyond.

Photo from our workshop - defining the key MVP features

3. Defined Our KPI's

I also worked with our team to define our KPI's. We set our sights on signing up 20 publishers to our early access program, with 60 verified RSS feeds within the first month.

4. Crafted the Critical User Journeys

Now that we had a strategy from a business perspective, we needed to bring it back down to the user.

I started by writing out each user story in order to bring a human-centered mentality to the design process. I also gathered back end requirements from our eng team so they were top of mind as I moved through design iterations.

Implementation

1. Iteration - Whiteboards and Initial Wireframes

I started with an initial round of whiteboards to walk through the user’s needs, pain points and how we might solve for them. I also used this part of the process to uncover new questions, risks, and constraints.

2. Designed the User Flows

I had to solve for two use cases: one where the user's GAIA and RSS emails match, and the other where they did not match. 

3. Tailored the App's Design System

I then customized a design system for our project, based off of Google's Material Design, to ensure our distributed team was working with the latest components. This was also to ensure our engineers could align their framework to a consistent system for easier implementation. 

4. Built a Responsive Design Across Five Breakpoints 

Our research showed that our users overwhelmingly prefered desktop when claiming their RSS feed, but I wanted to appeal to all use cases, so I designed a responsive experience across five breakpoints.

Reflection

Wow, what a ride this project was! Juggling deadlines and working with teams in Seattle, Mountain View, and Tel Aviv was intense, but I loved it. I learned so much about the importance of staying connected with engineers and being flexible. Plus, Google's open and collaborative atmosphere, where everyone felt safe to share ideas, made it such a fantastic experience. It was a real team effort, and I'm so proud of what we accomplished.