Building Adobe Podcast
Role
Lead designer
Timeframe
2020-2026
Team
TLDR
A storytelling-first podcast tool with AI that helps you sound your best.
It started with a voice in my ear
The voice of Mark Webster, to be specific. We were recording a podcast to pitch an idea: Adobe should build a tool for podcasters that isn't about audio, but instead about the stories people want to tell.
We sent this podcast to Adobe's Chief Product Officer, Scott Belsky, to listen on his commute. Here's a short snippet of it.
Using a podcast to pitch a podcasting tool was meta, but felt appropriate coming from the people who had spent time designing design tools and prototyping prototyping tools. And to make it, I had to use the exact clunky tools we were arguing should be replaced. Every painful edit was its own little proof of concept.
The pitch podcast identified the key problems we saw aspiring podcasters face. Let's walk through them.
Problem
Difficult software, expensive equipment
Existing podcasting workflows were intimidating. The tools alone required countless hours on YouTube to learn the ropes. Prospective podcasters were asked to shell out thousands of dollars for entry-level equipment: microphones, audio interfaces, cameras, soundproofing, and more.
Insight
People think in words, not waveforms.
Major audio tools use time-based waveforms for editing. These waveforms only show volume over time, so it's difficult to make edits. It borrows the metaphors of cutting analog tape from before digital tools existed.
Insight
Conversations degrade when tech gets in the way.
Podcasters need ways to record when guests can't be physically present. Zoom was a stop-gap for many podcasters. If your guest has technical difficulties, the conversation suffers.
Insight
Quality is a credibility signal.
Things like echoey voices, humming air conditioners, and traffic noise are distracting for podcast listeners. Even beginner podcasters know that listeners expect high quality audio.
“The amount of time I've lost waiting for an ambulance siren to pass… it's immeasurable.”
– Paolo C.
After listening to our pitch podcast, Scott was on board.
Now we had to build it.
Our solution
Adobe Podcast
A more approachable way to record, edit, and enhance spoken stories.
Enhance Speech
Sound like you recorded in a studio, even if you were on a subway platform.
Our first play as Adobe Podcast was Enhance Speech. Enhance Speech uses an AI model developed at Adobe that cuts through noise like butter. The quick tool lets you upload a file, adjust the enhancement strength, and download it. No fancy microphone required.
A demo of Enhance Speech. Everyone on our small team wore many hats. I made update videos like these and even handled customer support for some time.
Launching Enhance Speech
We launched the first version of Enhance Speech as a simple, standalone tool, and it went viral.
Creators shared before-and-after clips on social media and it took off. However, we had only just begun in our mission to make podcasting more accessible. We built on Enhance Speech's momentum by building toward a more ambitious tool: Studio.
Podcast Studio
The all-in-one podcasting tool on the web.
Record with others
We built recording directly into Podcast Studio so hosts could focus on the conversation, not the tech.
Hosts can record solo, or with guests by sharing a link. Most podcasters were using Zoom as a stopgap for remote recording, but it introduced audio quality issues and technical hiccups that derailed conversations.
Guests join through a simple link with no sign-in required, and we guide them through microphone and camera setup so hosts aren't stuck playing IT support.
Edit audio like a doc
When something needs to go, select it and delete it the same way you would in a document.
Cut, copy, paste and the audio follows. Nailing this under the hood was difficult because audio doesn't cut as cleanly as text looks. We apply techniques pros use to make edits sound smooth, like micro-crossfades and letting music breathe for a second before narration starts.
A principle that guided a lot of Studio's design: don't be subtle. An earlier version of that right-side action menu only had icons, and showed labels on hover. If people don't immediately understand what something does, they won't click it. We pushed ourselves to be explicit at every turn, because the cost of being too clear is zero and the cost of being too subtle is someone never discovering a feature.
Share your story
Export your project in a number of different ways to share with the world. Share a clip, add captions, get the transcript, or download the source files.
Shipping Studio
We bet early that transcript-based editing would be more approachable than waveforms, and it was. The tradeoff: making editing look like a document meant people expected it to behave like one. That tension taught us to be intentional about where the metaphor served podcasters and where it needed guardrails.
Podcast has opinions about what makes you sound good. You can't set the volume for background music, for example. Beginners often get that wrong because they already know what's being spoken and unconsciously make music too loud. Fewer knobs, fewer mistakes.
That push and pull between challenging conventions and respecting them defined most of the hard design decisions on this project.
A reflection on building Podcast
Adobe Podcast started as a pitch recording and became a product used by millions. Building from zero inside a company the size of Adobe meant constant pressure to justify our existence. On more than one occasion, there were plans to fold Podcast into larger products like Adobe Express or Firefly. Real revenue helped us stand our ground.
Outside of Adobe, we had a perception problem. To a lot of people, Adobe means pro tools, steep learning curves, and dark interfaces built for experts. We designed Podcast to feel different on purpose. Rounded, bright, friendly, warm. When people saw it for the first time, they were surprised it was Adobe. That surprise told us the product was landing the way we intended: as something built for people with a story to tell, not people with a decade of audio experience.
I learned a lot. Be explicit, not subtle. Bake opinions into the product. Make the hard stuff invisible. Every decision pointed back to the same question: does this make it easier for someone to share what they have to say?
I spent six years on this product, which is unusual in this industry. I stayed because the answer to that question kept changing, and the team finding those answers was exceptional.
1M+
monthly active users
100M+
files enhanced
Best Invention
TIME, 2025