Designing an audio research notebook for collaborative student learning

Students have good tools for studying from text. They can highlight a PDF, annotate an article, copy a quote, and share a reference that points to the exact line.

The problem I focused on was keeping that same precision while listening. A useful idea sits inside a 40-minute episode, and unless the student stops to note a timestamp or switches to a separate notes app, it’s gone. Sharing is worse — a podcast link tells a study partner nothing about which two minutes mattered.

The question this kept coming back to: how might we help students capture, organise, and discuss useful moments from audio as easily as they already do with text?

The primary user is a research-heavy university student, using podcasts, recorded lectures, audiobooks, and uploaded readings while working on essays, assignments, and group study.

Research had two parts: a short survey of listeners about how they consume and study from audio (around two dozen responses, so I treat it as directional rather than robust), and desk and market research into how existing tools handle audio. I looked at how podcast apps, note-taking tools, read-it-later apps, and university learning tools break down once audio has to become study material.

Together, the survey and the desk research pointed to five conclusions, each of which shaped a feature.

The first version of Jess tried to be too much — discovery, social feeds, live broadcasting, premium courses. The most useful thing I did on this project was cut it back. I narrowed the MVP to one learning loop: capture a useful moment, give it context, and make it reusable. Everything that didn’t serve that was deferred.

The walkthrough follows one student from hearing something useful to reusing it later. Step through it below.

The MVP comes down to a single cycle that turns listening into reusable, shareable study material.

I ran 3 informal usability sessions with friends who were students at the time. They weren’t formally recruited, so I treat them as directional rather than conclusive.

One signal stood out: a participant was uncomfortable that their study activity might be visible to others by default. That reinforced a decision I’d been weighing — to give students explicit private/public control over clips, notes, and playlists, rather than assuming a social-by-default model.

I treated Jess as a multimodal study tool, not an audio-only app — students should be able to listen, read transcripts, search saved clips, and comment in text or audio.