The Apple Podcasts search experience now features categories in the empty state.
Considering there was nothing there before, the categories in the Search empty state now give users a meaningful nudge to start their first search.
My responsibilities were focused on needfinding, ideation, and UI explorations on valuable additions specifically to the Podcasts Search experience. The larger vision for the Search experience was owned by multiple teams within the Apple Media Products group (Podcasts, Music, Apple TV, Maps, App Store, etc.). I did not see through the engineering execution and design QA after design approvals.
I am not at liberty to speak about other explorations and work I did on the Podcasts search experience.
Instead, I’ll share some open-ended questions about the Search experience:
How does Search differ from Browse?
Should the categories be personalized or rearranged in order depending on the user? Or are the most popular categories always at top?
How much do we help a user when auto-completing a search result?
Should searching the catalog be separate from searching your own Library?
What is considered a successful search? Is it just finding a result, or do we track to see how deeply a user consumes what’s searched?
How much do we help a user when auto-completing a search result?
Is it useful to add more granular controls like filters in the context of Podcasts search?
Are there other search criteria a user might enter besides Episode Title or Show Title, such as Host, Guests, or Topics?
To learn more about the design process, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
