🔁 From Audio Waves to Words: Episodes of “The Daily” Now Come with Transcripts

Dalit Shalom, writing for NYT Open, gives us a look into the design process behind The Daily’s transcript pages:

Some of our initial designs included text that appeared, karaoke-style, as an overlay on the audio player. While this gave weight to what was being said in the audio at a given moment, it didn’t allow for searching through the episode. Much like closed captions on video, how quickly text appeared was dependent on how fast words were said in the audio. Since many people often process audible words faster than they read printed words, we didn’t see this as an optimal experience for our users.

Our initial designs presented the transcripts tightly bound to the audio, meaning readers would have to engage with the player to read the text. We wanted readers to be able to skim the transcript without playing the audio, but still be able to control the audio if they chose to listen and read at the same time.