I like listening to podcasts.
That’s a great way to use, to spend your time.
There are tons of good and different podcasts on various themes. Some are useful, some are entertaining, some are both.
Of course, with whole pandemic situation one of the main timeslot for listening podcasts (for me) is lost - commuting to work, but there are still options when to listen, like routine things, house chores, and so on.
For me there are a few UX aspects desired for the process itself:
- an ability to increase playback speed without sound distortion; pretty common nowadays (saved days with it, with 1.5x on average, higher if possible)
- lately almost all the popular apps learned to trim excess silence (saved hours with it even on slight settings)
- being able to work offline/download episodes
- export/import podcasts list with OPML or other format, to avoid vendor lock
- it’s convenient if there are customizable playlists, automatically populated with new episodes, saved offline
- mobile app is more preferable due to most common usecases, though desktop app is a good addition
For several years I prefer PocketCasts - it has optional cat icon =^__^=.
Not everyone likes listening, and as for me I usually prefer reading over listening or watching, but still - in some cases podcasts are really useful.