I remember thinking about this exact problem (branching conversations, in particular audio), but I couldn't find a reasonable consumption pattern.
Looking at how I consume podcasts, it's a completely passive experience - I probably have something in my hands and can't talk. Choosing paths is just too much interactivity.
I figured that maybe that's just a wrong mode to look at it and people can consume the whole thing differently, not as a podcast. Ok then, I'm an obsessed power user/fan, I consume the whole thing, all branches. Given how human attention/memory works, that means returning to earlier parts of recording after listening to branch at least some of the time, multiple times experiencing 'where did we start? Let me go back a bit. Oh, that topic was the starting. Let me forward a bit now that I know it'. That's horrible, I think. You were at least more reasonable than me when thinking about it and decided to have only 1 level of branching ; )
In similar vein, what happens when comment gets added after I already listened/how do I know which parts are 'the definite experience'? Unlike previous two issues, those questions are answerable, but I'd still like to hear what you think the answers are!
I think there can be several ways to use it. I think passive listening can and for most will be how it's used. But people who want to discuss and "add to a conversation" will have the option.
Definitely will be modifying the experience to be fully handsfree.
I think the context issue is what can make this actually work or not. Currently it's not built out but my thinking is to have a short context of what was commented on i.e. 10 seconds before the comment. That way you can jump back into the conversation from a new comment left.
I think the context can also be determined by how long it's been since you listened to the last audio - meaning a comment left after a week might have 60s of context vs a comment after 10 mins might just have 5s.
And yes, the UI isn't great at showing what you already listened to now but that needs to be obvious too.
General tendency for internet content tends to be strong separation between creators and consumers, in particular limited interest of consumers in other consumers (think twitch chat. Each message is valued very little compared to the streamer, to the point where they always read out messages they respond to). That means unless there's something nudging people to default outside of central path of audio, adding to conversation isn't part of canon content.
There could be a way for responder to signal where the content they are answering starts, with some sort of fuzzy automation in the future. I have strong doubts about the actual experience of this for the listener, but maybe that's solvable.
I meant situation, where I already consumed the whole recording, but it gets response later on.
I do not have mental model for context being logically attached to the response. Do you think about it as response+context being a valid piece of content?
I could see it working a bit better if the original podcast had fixed points where they allow comments. So they can say something like "ok now we will open this section up for comments, and afterwards we'll continue on to...".
Then as comments come in they can follow a dialog structure, or the original poster can come in and add some clarification as a reply.
edit: If there are a lot of comments coming in, you could set it to autoplay only the top X comments and their replies or whatever.
For reviewing afterwards, it would also be really helpful to have an auto transcription so you can quickly scroll through for anything you missed or want to go back to.
When I was reading the website, I thought "oh, I misunderstood: this is a threaded voice memo app, that's cool".
Threaded voice memos would be cool. I have some friends who send voice memos like emails and I like it a lot. If we could converse more like email that would be cool. Maybe there's even something like a blockquote in threaded voice memo universe? (Low pass filtered sample of the original memo?) :-)
I agree with other commenters who are confused about the use case for this though. Podcasts are passive in my understanding. I don't listen to them but the people I know who do listen to them in situations where they really wouldn't want to be doing something interactive. (Like working on a car, or walking the dog.)
Edit: thinking about it a bit more, I suppose you're trying to set up a broadcast platform, not a communication platform. In those terms I think it makes more sense, but maybe using the words "conversation" and "friends" leads the mind in the wrong direction. You might try appealing to podcast authors directly?
Looks nice, the “tree” visualization gives the UI a pretty unique look.
Why did you decide to work on this specific idea? I don’t quite see what problem this is meant to solve and for whom, which makes it a little hard to understand the app.
I hope that doesn’t come across as discouraging an interesting experiment.
The demo video focuses on how the UI works, but it might be more helpful if it showed a situation someone is in where they have a use for this. Basically, “real” people doing real recordings, not just the same person talking for a few seconds to show that the app is recording.
The idea came when a few friends and I wanted to "start a podcast" but ultimately didn't want to actually share what we were talking about. We also were spread out all around the world so we started uploading short audios to a google drive.
So here is one potential application: consulting, advising and/or one-on-one tutoring/teaching.
There could be a parent script on a particular topic-call it a mini-lecture-which can then be “forked” by each user (or team). Then there would be a private and unique version of that interaction which is uniquely identified and stored for the advisor as well as the user.
The advisor might want to monetize these “forks” somehow-so that would need to be considered.
A side-by-side comparison of this with an asynchronous “zoom” experiment would be interesting to test the value of audio alone.
I hadn't thought about the consulting use case much yet but I think for lectures/ education this could be a potential game changer. I suppose any Q&A style talk could benefit form the format - thanks for the ideas!
No, the main idea is that this isn't an app for creating podcasts with friends in real-time. While you might equate "asynchronous" with "not live", the actual contrast is between asynchronous and synchronous. The decision to stream a podcast live or make it available for playback later is separate from whether it's recorded in real-time or not. The "micro" aspect emphasizes the app's focus on short conversations, not extensive podcast recordings.
My cousin and I talk regularly and we often go down long branching tangents. We joke that we wish we had a git version control setup for our convos so we could keep track of all the branches and find our way back to the main branch. Roads seems like it's going to be a pretty good fit for us. What would really be awesome is if roads could have roads.
Edit: I see from the comments that nested roads are on the way. Excellent!
I think this is excellent. Maybe what Clubhouse should have been! The onboarding is pretty slick. My only comment is the speaker is too slick/perfect. Think it would be cool after her to have a second more “typical person” speaking to get a feel for what it is like talking to friends.
Also audio upload time was a bit slow.
I like how add friends just lists everyone on the platform! Quaint!
Thanks for the feedback! I agree the into audio sounds a bit robotic. And yes the speed of the app in general is horrible - a lot of low hanging speeding optimizations on my list tho
Readit News
I remember thinking about this exact problem (branching conversations, in particular audio), but I couldn't find a reasonable consumption pattern.
Looking at how I consume podcasts, it's a completely passive experience - I probably have something in my hands and can't talk. Choosing paths is just too much interactivity.
I figured that maybe that's just a wrong mode to look at it and people can consume the whole thing differently, not as a podcast. Ok then, I'm an obsessed power user/fan, I consume the whole thing, all branches. Given how human attention/memory works, that means returning to earlier parts of recording after listening to branch at least some of the time, multiple times experiencing 'where did we start? Let me go back a bit. Oh, that topic was the starting. Let me forward a bit now that I know it'. That's horrible, I think. You were at least more reasonable than me when thinking about it and decided to have only 1 level of branching ; )
In similar vein, what happens when comment gets added after I already listened/how do I know which parts are 'the definite experience'? Unlike previous two issues, those questions are answerable, but I'd still like to hear what you think the answers are!
Definitely will be modifying the experience to be fully handsfree.
I think the context issue is what can make this actually work or not. Currently it's not built out but my thinking is to have a short context of what was commented on i.e. 10 seconds before the comment. That way you can jump back into the conversation from a new comment left.
I think the context can also be determined by how long it's been since you listened to the last audio - meaning a comment left after a week might have 60s of context vs a comment after 10 mins might just have 5s.
And yes, the UI isn't great at showing what you already listened to now but that needs to be obvious too.
There could be a way for responder to signal where the content they are answering starts, with some sort of fuzzy automation in the future. I have strong doubts about the actual experience of this for the listener, but maybe that's solvable.
I meant situation, where I already consumed the whole recording, but it gets response later on.
I do not have mental model for context being logically attached to the response. Do you think about it as response+context being a valid piece of content?
Then as comments come in they can follow a dialog structure, or the original poster can come in and add some clarification as a reply.
edit: If there are a lot of comments coming in, you could set it to autoplay only the top X comments and their replies or whatever.
For reviewing afterwards, it would also be really helpful to have an auto transcription so you can quickly scroll through for anything you missed or want to go back to.
Threaded voice memos would be cool. I have some friends who send voice memos like emails and I like it a lot. If we could converse more like email that would be cool. Maybe there's even something like a blockquote in threaded voice memo universe? (Low pass filtered sample of the original memo?) :-)
I agree with other commenters who are confused about the use case for this though. Podcasts are passive in my understanding. I don't listen to them but the people I know who do listen to them in situations where they really wouldn't want to be doing something interactive. (Like working on a car, or walking the dog.)
Edit: thinking about it a bit more, I suppose you're trying to set up a broadcast platform, not a communication platform. In those terms I think it makes more sense, but maybe using the words "conversation" and "friends" leads the mind in the wrong direction. You might try appealing to podcast authors directly?
And yes I think some of the language is confusing, thanks for the feedback I'll be modifying some of the copy shortly
Why did you decide to work on this specific idea? I don’t quite see what problem this is meant to solve and for whom, which makes it a little hard to understand the app.
I hope that doesn’t come across as discouraging an interesting experiment.
The demo video focuses on how the UI works, but it might be more helpful if it showed a situation someone is in where they have a use for this. Basically, “real” people doing real recordings, not just the same person talking for a few seconds to show that the app is recording.
The idea came when a few friends and I wanted to "start a podcast" but ultimately didn't want to actually share what we were talking about. We also were spread out all around the world so we started uploading short audios to a google drive.
It’s always a hassle to combine separate audio streams, and simply using the zoom recording isn’t usually good enough (the quality is quite low).
So having an app that records on-device but later merges those audio streams seamlessly is very useful.
There could be a parent script on a particular topic-call it a mini-lecture-which can then be “forked” by each user (or team). Then there would be a private and unique version of that interaction which is uniquely identified and stored for the advisor as well as the user.
The advisor might want to monetize these “forks” somehow-so that would need to be considered.
A side-by-side comparison of this with an asynchronous “zoom” experiment would be interesting to test the value of audio alone.
Cheers! Looks interesting!
Edit: I see from the comments that nested roads are on the way. Excellent!
Also audio upload time was a bit slow.
I like how add friends just lists everyone on the platform! Quaint!
Could this be a place to make friends?
But an interesting idea.