Radio Ambulante — Growing Audience Through Better Discovery 2015–2016

NPR-affiliated Spanish-language narrative podcast

Using audience research to expand reach and learning value

Decision at Stake

The team needed to decide how to grow Radio Ambulante’s audience without diluting its editorial voice — and whether the podcast could serve a broader set of listener needs beyond passive listening.

Leadership suspected the show was being used in unexpected ways, but lacked clarity on who those listeners were and how to support them intentionally.

Context

Radio Ambulante is a Spanish-language narrative podcast telling stories from across Latin America. While originally designed for native Spanish speakers, audience signals suggested growing adoption among learners and educators — a potentially strategic growth opportunity.

My Role

I led audience research and synthesis to help the editorial and product teams understand who was listening, why they were engaging, and what progress they were trying to make.

Research Approach (in Service of Decisions)

We focused on understanding listener intent — especially where Radio Ambulante was being “hired” for learning, teaching, and language practice rather than entertainment alone.

Methods & Research Rigor

The research combined qualitative interviews with behavioral analysis to identify distinct listener segments and their unmet needs.

Audience interviews & segmentation

We conducted interviews with listeners across proficiency levels and contexts, including:

Native Spanish speakers
Spanish language learners
Educators using the podcast in classrooms

This revealed that nearly half of listeners were non-native speakers using the podcast as a learning tool.

Sensemaking & opportunity framing

We mapped listener goals and constraints to identify where Radio Ambulante could support deeper engagement — without compromising editorial integrity.

Design Changes

The research did not stop at insight generation. It directly informed experience decisions about how Radio Ambulante should support different listener contexts — especially mobile and learning-oriented use.

Using what we learned about listener goals, constraints, and environments, we made targeted changes to the user experience and key interaction touchpoints.

Mobile-first experience improvements

Performance optimization: Reduced page load time from approximately 11 seconds to 3 seconds, improving accessibility for users on slower connections.
Complexity reduction: Removed unused or low-value features to streamline the experience and reduce cognitive load.
Responsive design: Optimized layouts and interactions for a growing mobile audience, reflecting how and where listeners were actually engaging with the podcast.

These changes ensured the experience supported both casual listeners and learners — without fragmenting the product or compromising editorial integrity.

Impact

The research led the team to intentionally support educators and language learners by adding teaching and learning resources to RadioAmbulante.org.

This expanded Radio Ambulante's audience, increased episode longevity, and positioned the podcast as both a storytelling platform and a learning resource.

David Robert Leonard and I documented the process and created an online book.
Read the book

Project Portfolio