Designing Participation
Reimagining how podcast audiences shape conversations.
Role
Product Designer & Creative Strategist
Industry
Tech and Media
Duration
8 months
Podcast audiences are deeply engaged, yet participation rarely extends beyond comments, likes, and shares after an episode has already been published.
Creators face the opposite challenge. While communities often have strong opinions about who should be interviewed and what conversations should happen next, there are very few structured ways for creators to capture those insights before recording
My role
Working as part of a cross-functional startup team, I contributed across product design, UX strategy, onboarding, website experiences, and engagement flows. My work focused on creating a connected journey that introduced users to this new interaction model while lowering friction at every step
Result
During my time at dLogos, the company secured over $500K in committed funding, onboarded 100+ early users, and partnered with 20+ podcasts as it built the foundation for a new model of community-driven podcast engagement.
How might we transform passive listeners into active collaborators?
Discover
Understand
Personalise
Participate
Contribute
Share
Designing a website that introduces a new product category unlike many digital products, dLogos couldn't rely on familiar mental models.
Users weren't signing up for another podcast app, nor were they simply consuming content. The website needed to communicate an entirely new behavior—participating in conversations before they happened.
Instead of overwhelming visitors with product functionality, the experience gradually introduced the value proposition before encouraging action.
Designing onboarding as the first act of participation
Traditional onboarding often asks users to commit before they fully understand the product.
Because dLogos introduced an unfamiliar interaction model, reducing cognitive load became one of our primary design goals.
Instead of requiring users to create detailed profiles or complete lengthy setup forms, onboarding invited them to make a series of lightweight, familiar decisions.
These small interactions immediately made the experience feel personal while simultaneously generating useful signals for future recommendations.
Turning curiosity into participation
The Episode Builder became the heart of the product.
Instead of asking users to start with a blank page or interact with an abstract AI prompt, the experience guided them through a structured journey for imagining conversations they wanted to hear.
The goal wasn’t simply to generate podcast ideas.
It was to make participation approachable, collaborative, and enjoyable.
Progressive Disclosure
Introduce complexity only when users are ready.
Each decision builds naturally on the previous one, allowing users to stay focused without feeling overwhelmed
Recognition over recall
Users shouldn’t need to invent ideas from scratch.
Familiar speakers, podcasts, and communities provide recognizable entry points that encourage exploration.
Community Before Creation
The experience wasn't designed around individual content generation.
Instead, every interaction reinforces the idea that great conversations emerge through collective participation.
Lowering Friction
Small moments matter.
From lightweight onboarding to structured decision-making, every step was designed to reduce hesitation and encourage contribution.
Discover
Participation begins with exploration.
Users can browse featured speakers, search across an expanding library of public figures, or discover unexpected combinations through curated recommendations.
Build
Once users selected a speaker, they were guided toward matching them with podcasts and communities where those conversations could happen.
Contribute
Participation becomes meaningful when users contribute their own perspective..
Share
Participation shouldn't end when the interaction is complete.
Reflection
Working on dLogos reinforced an idea that has become central to my design process:
Good product design isn't only about making interfaces easier to use—it is about designing new behaviors that people are willing to adopt.
Across the website, onboarding, and Episode Builder, the focus remained consistent: reducing friction, building confidence, and creating meaningful opportunities for participation.
Designing within an early-stage startup also meant embracing ambiguity. Product direction evolved quickly, ideas were continuously tested, and collaboration extended far beyond interface design into product strategy, user experience, and growth thinking.
More than designing screens, this project taught me how thoughtful product experiences can transform passive audiences into active communities.