Clubhouse

Overview

Context

Clubhouse is a live audio social media app that allows people to talk, develop ideas, deepen friendships, and meet interesting new people around the world.

The need for a more personal and as-close-to-reality way to communicate during the pandemic attract a huge amount of users for Clubhouse. According to the Clubhouse blog, in a single week during January 2021 they managed to get more than 2,000,000 users. But only two months later, the number of users dropped dramatically.

Figure: Clubhouse download figures across some of its popular markets, according to estimates by AppMagic

Research Question:

Why Clubhouse fails within such a short period of time?
Can we revitalize it through proper UX design?

Research

Interview

We initiated the project by conducting semi-structured interviews with addicted users to understand why many of them gradually abandoned Clubhouse.

Masa

CinCin

Windy

Micheal

Product Critique

The reasons are manifold, and distributed across different pages.

Design Focus

The affinity diagram made us realized our design should focus on content discovery, participation and podcast-like information integration.

User Journey Map

Pain Points:

1 - Difficult to find more rooms of interest.

2 - Cannot catch up with the ongoing discussion promptly.

3 - Hard to precisely check back on previous contents.

Ideation

Brainstorm

Based on the above discoveries, we brainstormed some potential features to solve the pain points. By using the proposition grid, we finally confirmed on three important categories for further development.

Difficult to find more
rooms of interest

Cannot catch up with the ongoing discussion promptly

Hard to precisely check back on previous contents

Information Retrieval

Real-time Summary

Content Replay

1. Add room rating feature;
2. Allow sorting rooms with labels;
3. Differentiate rooms based on colors/logos;
4. Categorize rooms on the home page.

1. AI/ML algorithms condense lengthy discussions into concise abstracts for user convenience;
2. Convert audio into text, generating a complete transcript of the discussion.

1. Add the option to create chapters in a replay for easier navigation;
2. Choose to listen to specific speakers in the replay;
3. Enable clipping based on time or speakers.

Application of AI

I. Speech Recognition

With a preset language, AI algorithms extract acoustic features from audio materials and analyze them with lexical, grammar and pragmatic models to generate meaningful strings of words and phrases. A “CC” feature creates real-time subtitles. The generated text is then added to a transcript of the entire discussion, which keeps updating and can be accessed by everyone in the room.

II. Text Summary

AI employs neural networks to condense essential information from texts, offering both extractive and abstractive summaries. This includes speech summarization based on speech recognition for discussions and individual speakers.

Value Proposition:

1 - Information Retrieval: quickly locate targeted rooms

2 - Real-time Summary: generate abstracts with AI algorithms

3 - Content Replay: precisely check back on previous contents

Prototyping & Iterations

Paper Wireframes

Usability Testing

After developed the first version of low-fi prototype, we conducted an exhaustive usability test, and the findings were significant helpful.

Usability Testing Plan

Introduction

Date: 21/3/2022-26/3/2022
Research objective: Evaluate whether the revamped interface enhances users' knowledge and information acquisition efficiency.

Participants

We recruited 6 participants for usability testing, 4 of which we already interviewed in the discovery phase. All 6 users used to be heavy users of Clubhouse, but have now given up using the app.

Tasks & Questions

Task1: (a) Please re-order all cards on the “ongoing” page and find the most popular room; (b) If you’re not interested in any rooms located on “ongoing” page, and decided to look elsewhere, what would you do?

Task2: You just joined a discussion on Ukraine and would like to know the opinions from the speakers and what they previously talked about. (a) What would you do if you want to comment with a picture in the chat room? (b) Suppose you are Jeremy, what would you do to edit your opinion?

Task3: You saved several rooms that Jeremy participated. (a) How to put them in a folder named “Jeremy?” (b) How to move the music-related room into the folder called “music?”

Task4: (a) In one of the replayed rooms where Jeremy participated, you’d like to chek out the real-time transcript of the speaker. What would you do? (b)What to do next if you only want to listen to Jeremy’s speech? (c) What to do if you want to capture one moment of his speech aqnd share it to Twitter?

KPIs

Quantitative Measure: task completion time, task success/error rate, number of asking for assistance
Qualitative Measure: user’s overall review and satisfaction about the test

Iterations

After conducting the usability testing with the first 4 users we interviewed at the beginning, we made various iterations based on their feedback.

Hallway:
Find an interested room

5/6 participants had never started a room and seldom chat with people in the backchannel. They use Calendar and Saved more.

3/6 participants said the “sort by” buttons not visible enough. We add an additional layer of filters belonging to the “ongoing” tab.

Original Interface
bottom 3 buttons not useful for general listener

1st ver
“sort by” not salient enough

3rd ver
hide the search bar;
add more sorting basis

Guess u like:
Optimize recommendation algorithms

2/6 participants complain about the low efficiency of viewing only one card each page. We designed a multi-card layout of “Guss u like”.

4/6 participants wanted to retrieve previously liked rooms. We add a “Liked” folder that can store all rooms user liked.

1rd ver
Only card view
‍

3rd ver
“Liked” folder for retrieve liked rooms later;
Add multiple card layout.

Transcripts & AI Summary:
Catch up with the context easier

3/6 participants canont find the AI summaried viewpoints of speakers. We decided to add Onboarding instructions for new users, and make the interaction more efficient: click on the avatars to view viewpoints.

1st ver
switch the page to view summaries

2nd ver
tap avatars to view summaries

3rd ver
add onboarding instructions;
click on profile to see pop-up info and editable summaries

Replay:
Listen to one speaker only

3/6 participants cannot find “Listen to Jeremy only”. This key feature should be more visible. And the “Clip” button were not used very frequently.

1st ver
switch the page to view summaries

2nd ver
tap avatars to view summaries

3rd ver
add onboarding instructions;
click on profile to see pop-up info and editable summaries

Replay:
Listen to one speaker only

3/6 participants cannot find “Listen to Jeremy only”. This key feature should be more visible. And the “Clip” button were not used very frequently.

1st ver
horizontal mode is not distinguished from the vertical one

3nd ver
divide into sections with titles for accurate information retrieval

Final Prototyping

Ongoing & Upcoming Events

Cards can be sorted in the “Ongoing” session. “Upcoming” displays all rooms with people you’ve followed. “Events” only show rooms that you subscribed; if you’ll be a speaker, the card turns into green.

Guess You Like

Discover content beyond your usual interests right here! You can save intriguing rooms in a 'Liked' folder for future exploration.

Join a Discussion

Enter a room and view transcipts to dive into the discussion quickly!

Ongoing & Upcoming Events

The 'Listen to Speaker Only' feature aids in swift content retrieval, while the horizontal screen mode delivers an enhanced, immersive experience.

Reflection.

This marked my first end-to-end UX project, undertaken as a pivotal move from architecture to product design. It proved to be an invaluable experience, allowing me to thoroughly hone my skills in UX research and design.

Our design approach adhered steadfastly to a user-centric philosophy from inception to execution. We commenced with four semi-structured interviews to gauge the scope of the problem, followed by exhaustive usability testing. Some users expressed their delight in seeing their feedback reflected in the prototype, a moment that filled me with pride and bolstered my confidence as a burgeoning UX designer.

Interestingly, Clubhouse refined some interfaces in the lastest version. Many of our ideas were proved to be needed. Navigation bar at the bottom deleted online friends and backchannel, added upcoming events and personal center. Replays can be fast-forwarded according to the speakers.