Nell - Designing a Generative AI Podcasting App for Personalized Audio Learning

Nell is a generative AI podcasting app that lets users create short, high-signal podcast episodes from any prompt, topic, article, or question. Inspired by A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, Nell is an adaptive educational tool that helped Nell become more independent, capable, and self-directed. Our goal was to bring that same spirit into audio: a system that could turn curiosity into personalized, useful listening experiences. Users could ask for anything from “a 10-minute history of the Roman Empire” to “explain the latest AI chip design news” and receive a concise 5-10 minute episode designed to be clear, direct, and information-dense.

Problem: AI Can Generate Content, But Podcast Creation Still Feels Too Hard

People are already using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and NotebookLM to summarize articles, explain papers, and generate learning material. But turning those outputs into a polished, listenable podcast still requires too much effort. The opportunity was to design a mobile-first experience that made podcast generation feel simple, fast, and native to the medium, not like a chatbot with an audio export button.

My Role: Product Design, Prototyping, and Core UX Decisions

I designed the core information architecture and end-to-end product experience, including:

Home, episode, and show detail screens
The show creation and generation flow
Host picker, search, profile, and onboarding flows
High-fidelity Xcode prototypes for testing mobile interactions
Loading states for long-running AI generation, including skeletons, spinners, and shimmering text

I also helped shape key product decisions, including making shows public by default to increase discovery and engagement, defining onboarding and retention metrics in PostHog, and deciding how identity should work across usernames, full names, and creator profiles.

Outcome: Private Beta, Fundraising, and Early Product Validation

The beta mobile app raised $XX from top-tier investors and angels, including Danny Rimer from Index Ventures, Guillermo Rauch from Vercel, Anton Osika from Lovable, Mati Staniszewski from ElevenLabs, and Soleio. As of August 2026, Nell has launched in private beta.

Selected Screens

Show Creation

Home screen

Show and Episode Details

Library

Selections from the Design System

Product Analytics

Appendix