Cassette — The best way for designers to record & share user interviews

@kunalslab Hi Kunal, thanks so much for the compliments. Glad you love the feature set. We've thought about the idea of building a Google Hangouts plugin or a screen capture utility for Skype and it's on our roadmap. However, that has it's own set of challenges including a whole different UI, much higher processing requirements for real-time transcription and more expensive storage.

Another question: if I am conducting the interview over the phone, can I still use this app? Would it need to be on speakerphone to work?

@tombielecki Great question! A project is the same as one interview recording. However, we call it a project since it's much more than just the audio recording. It also includes your bookmarks, comments and the interview guide for questions.

@tombielecki Another good question. Sadly, Apple doesn't allow us to record phone calls so we'd only be able to record calls if they are on speakerphone.

@preetangad Hey, Angad – congrats. It looks like a well-executed app that could help many speed up their participatory research workflows! Many including ethnographers, who might be another audience you want to target in the future. As an aside: who's your biggest competitor in this space, do you think? LiveScribe pens afford a related (but different) functionality – are they it?

@preetangad I couldn't find a way to mention PH in the invite request, but I'm really interested in testing this app. Bump me up!

@preetangad Angad I'm assuming this will launch for iOS? Seems that many here are just excited about the idea of voice transcription in an app on their phone...

@preetangad Awesome work! I know lots of alumni and students from the Design MBA program at California College of the Arts who would love product.

@joshmuccio @preetangad We'll be starting with iOS, with web sharing and collaboration on any device. For us, the idea of voice transcription on a phone is exciting because it allows designers to finally get the most from the impromptu conversations – in coffee shops, casual meetings, out in the world – that make up so much of user research.

@passingnotes Thanks for the great comment and the compliments! We haven't tested it with very long recordings yet but I don't see a reason why we wouldn't be able to record, transcribe and store very long interviews. Storage and transcription of audio files is a non-trivial cost so that would be the only barrier but we would love to help you design a plan that meets your needs. Could you send us a message using the Contact Us form on the site? We do allow users to export the raw audio files for editing and sharing anywhere. However, storing them on Cassette lets you use all the other awesome features including timestamped transcripts, revisiting bookmarks, powerful search and zero-overhead collaboration, so we hope you'll stay for those. Would adding something like public key encryption make you more comfortable? As designers, we encourage all users to ask their interviewees explicitly for permission to record beforehand. We've even included a script that they can use to explain why they need to record. However, we don't have any explicit disclosures like beeps etc at the moment. I was not aware of the legal requirements but we'll look into it.

@janet_alexandersson Hi Janet, delighted to hear that non-designers think this is compelling too. Out of curiosity, what use case do you have in mind? To answer your question, you can edit the audio recording and the transcript inside of the app itself so you won't need to worry about it doing that outside of the app. As for sharing, we do allow you to share the interview with other teammates who use Cassette, but not outside of the app. We think sharing just the audio file and the transcript outside of the app undermines the power of the product. If you invite collaborators to a project, they can skip to bookmarks, highlight specific parts of the transcript or audio, add comments and search through transcripts of all interviews. Hope that clarifies it!

@preetangad @janet_alexandersson I'm sorry, but it looks to me like you're trying to lock users into your app with the usual "Nah we don't have that feature because you don't need it" only with nice wording. A simple audio file on the device is all that takes, you don't even need it as a feature inside the app, you can just tell users the path for saved audio files.

@preetangad @janet_alexandersson This makes a compelling tool close to useless - and smells of bad business practice and an attempt to log in your user base. It didn't work for AOL in 1995, I doubt it will work for you. Evernote only yesterday posted a blog post, claiming that their success is due to their open nature. We currently use a variety of tools to record everything from briefing sessions to research, all f these allow sharing. Tools used range from audio to written note taking - Notability, Neo Lab pen, etc. I'd love to take advantage of cassette, but not if you lock in my content. You're a tool, your job is to make my life easier, not to lock me into an ecosystem.

@danr_4 @preetangad @janet_alexandersson totally agree. a nice spin on the explanation of why, but i agree: it's just locking people into the product. it's an instant reason i wouldn't use this. also, i don't really understand why it's targeting designers, as it's useful for anyone doing interviews. is there a reason for that?

@janet_alexandersson yeah, I also had this question. Being able to export is key for the research community as well

@sarthakgrover Sarthak, that's a great idea but I'm pretty sure there are other apps that solve that problem. For example, Invision now has an integration with Lookback that lets you record video from the front camera while a user clicks through a prototype (http://blog.invisionapp.com/user...)

@whattheferguson Thanks for the compliment Tyson! Our real-time transcription is powered by IBM Watson.

@mattahorton Matt, great to see you on here and thanks for the encouragement. Huge fan of the CCRMA and obviously share the d.school blood in my veins. Please do tell your friends to sign up too :)

@afhill Hey, Andrea. Thank you so much! We are so excited to share this with you. We are keeping track of everyone who found Cassette through Product Hunt ;)

@palakzatakia Thanks Palak! Indeed, when designers record 10 hours of user interviews, it's a waste of their time to have to go back and listen to all 10 hours of it. Moreover, given this intensive amount of work involved, no other team member gets to participate in the user research process since it takes too long. By using bookmarks, transcripts etc, we allow anyone to be able to revisit an interview in no time, bringing non-designers into the user research process.

@eighttwo_three Hey Chris, great question! The style guides are independent of the interviews, so you'd definitely be able to reuse one guide for many interviews. Hope that answers your question :)

@jonathanzwhite Hey Jonathan, I'm the designer. Thanks so much for your high praise! I've had the same frustration many a time. We are so excited to be working on a tool that will offer the freedom to focus on your conversations. Our hope is that more and more designers will get to the deeper insights that come from listening not just to what someone says, but how they say it.

@adrianherritt Hi Adrian, those are great ideas and we couldn't agree more. Not sure if you looked at the screenshots closely but we already have a powerful web interface for reviewing and sharing interviews and also a way for you to add a picture of the user :) We've also been talking to some folks at Capital One and are huge fans of all the work you've done with Design Thinking in the last few years!

@skywalker Thanks so much Jonathan. Transcription has definitely always been the holy grail for this use case and that's why the time is just right to launch this now. However, we didn't stop there. From our user testing, we found that the other features like zero-overhead collaboration, revisiting bookmarks and search are just as valuable as the transcription.

@sarthakgrover @skywalker @palakzatakia @mattahorton Thanks so much for your support. We've just released Cassette for iOS on the App Store. We're on Product Hunt again today. Would love if you can participate in the discussion there :)

@ourielohayon Hey Ouriel, agreed. We started with a focus on designers because it was our team's passion for Design Thinking that led us to working on Cassette. A lot of the current feature set is based around helping designers conduct better empathy interviews. We see many applications for the tool in the future. For what types of meetings do you see yourself using Cassette?

@ourielohayon @passingnotes @seysconstantijn Thanks so much for your support. We've just released Cassette for iOS on the App Store. We're on Product Hunt again today. Would love if you can participate in the discussion there :)

@trgorczynski Thank you so much!

Hey Kevin, great to hear! Cassette was designed with teams in mind. I made a note about PH on your request ;)

@guy Thanks for the comment. Cassette is an app for recording user interviews. Most designers already use voice recording during both in-person and virtual interviews. Cassette adds a lot more powerful functionality, including: - real time transcription, so you can skim or search through an interview instead of having to listen to the entire thing - one touch bookmarking, so you can revisit and share only the important moments - seamless collaboration with your entire team - and more... Hope this helps! Angad

@guy Thanks for your support. We've just released Cassette for iOS on the App Store. We're on Product Hunt again today. Would love if you can participate in the discussion there :)

@brandonxoliver That's a great idea. Would you be able to help us reach that audience?

@sergiomajluf Hey Sergio, thanks so much! I'll add a note about PH to your request ;)