Introduction

Dive Club, hosted by Co-Founder Michael Riddering, is dedicated to exploring design, creativity, and innovation. To better serve and grow its audience, Dive Club partnered with Genway AI to conduct an in-depth user research project aimed at understanding listener preferences, motivations, and suggestions for format improvements.

Objective

The research objective of the project was to gain insights into the preferences, motivations, and behaviors of Dive Club listeners, with a specific focus on:

• Favourite episodes and impactful elements

• Desired guests and themes

• Suggestions for improving the format to enhance learning and engagement

Methodology

Using Genway’s AI Agent, Dive Club conducted qualitative interviews with over 50 listeners from more than 23 countries in just a few days. This rapid feedback approach allowed the Dive Club team to gain valuable, real-time insights efficiently and effectively.

Key Findings

Podcast’s Impact on Design Work & Strategies

Interview Snippet:

Q: Can you share more about how these episodes and courses have impacted your work or approach to design? Have you implemented any specific strategies or tools that you discovered through the podcast?

Yeah, so using a lot of techniques from the advanced Figma course, obviously, But one thing that I'm looking to explore more is the bridging the gap between design and like front end engineering. And the concept of a design engineer is something that's made me very curious as to how I can break out of just making prototyping in Figma, but also beginning to bridge the gap and experiment with. Stuff in Codeland as well.

Listener Motivation & Decision-Making Factors

Interview Snippet:

Q: Can you tell me more about what motivates you to listen to the Dive Club podcast once or twice a month? What draws you to specific episodes?

Usually the topic or the speaker if it's someone that I'm familiar with or is a company that I'm interested in, or if the topic is something that's relevant to what I'm working on.

Listener Preferences & Impactful Podcast Elements

Impact & Next Steps

Based on the insights, Dive Club plans to:

• One of the key themes was hearing how many listeners were struggling to keep up with all of the content and experienced FOMO as a result. Multiple people asked for summary recordings and another said he wished he could listen to the key takeaways I send out via email. After receiving this feedback we decide to launch a new "mini" episode type that highlights the key ideas shared across different episodes. We've already seen over 25,000 listens for the first three releases and a significant uptick in positive feedback. Mini episodes are now a core pillar of our strategy moving into next year.

  
  

Interview Snippet

Length of the podcast? Umm I don't commute anymore so I need short podcasts that are like 20 minutes or shorter to really be able to listen to them all. I guess the utility of the information is also important to me. Like can I apply it in my everyday or some decisions that I have coming up? And also the hosts are are entertaining like they can't. Be boring. And they need to be somewhat like reputable.

Conclusion

This collaboration with Genway AI allowed Dive Club to connect with its audience on a deeper level, empowering the podcast to remain relevant and impactful in the ever-evolving design space. The research findings will guide future episodes, ensuring that Dive Club continues to deliver valuable, engaging content.

About Dive Club

Dive Club is an interview-style podcast that features today’s top designers, founders, and engineers. Hosted by Michael Riddering, Dive Club is listened to by 50,000+ designers all over the world each month.

About Genway AI

Genway AI specializes in AI-powered user research, enabling companies to collect in-depth insights through rapid, scalable, and qualitative interviews. By leveraging advanced AI capabilities, Genway AI helps brands make data-driven decisions to enhance user experience.