Growing demand for social audio platforms during pandemic

Club house is an audio platform, which creates in-person conversations for the digital age. Clubhouse launched in 2021, which aim to return conversation and intimacy to online communication while people feel being isolated during pandemic. But downloads of the app have fallen 86 percent in 1year, because the problems from users feedbacks did not get improved.

Problems

Competitor Analysis

It was important for me to analyze the competitor landscape. Especially after the success of Clubhouse. Competitors such as Twitter, Discord, and Spotify have since implemented live audio chat features of their own. However, these strong competitors lack engaging visual design and are integrated into social media apps instead of being standalone platforms. Additionally, they do not cover all general topics. It is worth noting that Taiwanese people rarely use Twitter and Discord, which presents an opportunity for Clubhouse to improve its offerings and stand out in the market.

Solutions

Improvements

Based on various feedbacks from 6 mates + 2 mentors, I continually iterated my design over the span of 1 weeks with 3 major improvements:

Sketches of Possible sections of the app

Drawing the screen possibilities was a fascinating experience, although I struggled with designing the "Start a Room" and "Live Room" pages. The previous version of the app had caused confusion among users regarding the distinction between house, room, and club. To address this issue, I decided to design a section that would introduce these concepts before users begin. I also had to determine the best way to lay out the speaker and audience accounts in the room to make it more visually appealing and user-friendly.

Prototyping

Link my Full Figma File  HERE

Reflections + Key Takeaways

• Be cautious, but never assume. As it is my goal to design with as much empathy as possible, I started using the app every day and interviewed people who regularly use it or haven’t used it. This helped me to improve the app and gain insights into why it was originally designed in certain ways.

• Ask for help from different professions! As I conducted research and designed the app, I encountered several questions that required input from different perspectives. Beside understanding the users, I also need to take care the viewpoint of the business, in order for these features to be offered, I will need to develop a more persuasive value proposition. How to make the algorithm work with this design? Could it result in the loss or gain of potential users? How to make sure the third part won’t get the user data to protect their privacy? To address these concerns, I asked my engineer and product manager friends to give me some feedbacks which help me to ideate it.

  
  

NEXT STEP

• Research on Clubhouse privacy and security issues

Thanks for your reading!

Following the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong, more Mandarin speakers have been encouraged to express their opinions. Taiwanese people, in particular, have discovered Clubhouse as a free platform to discuss politics. However, with the increasing number of spaces to speak freely, concerns have been raised about the security and privacy of this app.

What do creators think?

For the audience I have interviewed with, especially in the Taiwanese and Asia market. They are looking for a media to talk about issues and topics. But they found the difficulties to have flexibility and efficiency of use. So the product can’t hook the users sustainably.

“I mostly promote on my other social media, because my profile is not attractive to gain followers here..'

~ female, 39, podcaster

"I get pretty lonely on stage when I’m speaking, It’s a bit awkward of not knowing people’s feedback.”

~ male, 45, tutor

"Normally the talk would last for pretty long, I hope to highlight the contents, let people feel free to join anytime."

~ male, 28, consultant