Highlighting for audio listeners

Published on 2022-07-26

Highlighting for audio listeners

Originally Published August 4, 2021

Dear Blinkiest

I have recently subscribed to your service. You provide me with a quick way to get a glimpse of…

  • Books who have been stuck on my to read list for ages
  • A quick revisit of books
  • A quick way to hear about subjects outside my normal interests
  • A trailer for books I will end up reading

However! As a listener I have a hard time saving the sections I find interesting enough that I would like to revisit them.

Please make a highlight function for audio blinks!
 I even have an idea to how it might be done.

Double tap for highligt

Many headsets do have a play/pause and volume up and down. Double tapping on the play/pause is normally mapped to skip/next. But could one of the volume controls be used for highligting? ( And if the buttons doens’t work. Maybe have me shake my phone. Think outside the screen )

The time-consuming part

Knowing where the user is the text. Similar to subtitles the text needs to be match with the timestamp. But I would settle for paragraph highlights. It doesn’t need to be on a sentence level. ( Shouldn’t AI be able to match the text up against the audio in 2021? )

Design for failure

No matter how good you are in you end. I will most certainly double-tap that volume button a bit late sometimes. So design for failure and incorporate and easy edit.

That’s it! Tried to keep it short - like you like it.

Photo Credits

‘Cover’ by Henry Be on Unsplash
‘Double Tap’ by ERIC ZHU on Unsplash