If you’re a regular podcast listener, you’d be familiar with the following: the host takes a moment out of their show to suggest you support the podcast by going to a website to donate or subscribe.

Or, they take a few seconds to describe a video, or a picture, or a scene. Or a new character is introduced to the story – one you’re desperate to google a picture of, to see what he or she is like.

While the content of podcasts has changed, with producers experimenting with audio and new formats over the years, there has been little change in how they are played.

Mostly you have an app which can subscribe to podcasts, play audio and do a few other things. This is in large part due to the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the podcast feed itself – the system still runs on XML, just as it did in the early days of podcasting, and there’s only so much you can do with the standard XML feed.

We want to try changing this, with a project supported by a Google News Initiative innovation grant.

Our colleagues at the Guardian US built an experimental podcast player that incorporated graphics, a chat interface and enhanced notifications synced to the audio. So, for example, you could see a chart about the data the host was discussing pop up on your phone as she was discussing it.

Our project is similar to this but with a different focus. We’re hoping to make it easier for listeners to support podcast makers.

First, we want to define a new specification which can be used within existing podcast feeds to trigger events during podcast playback. We’ll use this enhanced feed to do things like display graphics and other content but we’ll also use it to give listeners an easier way to give money to the people who made the podcast.

Contributions from listeners are an important source of revenue for many podcasts.

Voluntary contributions in audio are now elicited by messages that ask listeners to perform an action to contribute, such as go to a specific website to find the “contribute” page. This creates a barrier between the intention to make a voluntary contribution and the payment action.

What our new system will do is this: when the host is calling out for supporters we can display a notification or content within the podcast app that has a direct link to a financial contribution page. This will reduce the steps listeners are required to take before they can contribute.

Here’s an early mock-up of how it might look:

Here’s a nicer mock-up, made by an actual graphic designer:

If you are a person who makes podcasts and you have suggestions for this project, please get in touch with us: miles.martignoni@theguardian.com and nick.evershed@theguardian.com.

We’re also hiring an Android developer to make this happen, you can check out the job ad here.

FAQ

Are you going to create the pop-up ads of the podcast world? Won’t these be annoying?

No, we hope not! While we’re making it possible for podcasts to trigger notifications, there are a few reasons why using them for ads isn’t going to work.

The events defined in our feed specification can’t be triggered without the support of the podcast application itself. First, app makers would have to build in support for the enhanced feed, and second, notifications will be handled from the app just like for any other app – so you could switch them off entirely.

This means that ads aren’t going to work from a mechanical point of view. These events have to be something that people actually want to look at or click on, so we hope supporter callouts fall into this category for some people.

The whole thing is entirely optional – if you don’t want to look at images and graphics while you’re listening, you don’t have to.

I listen to podcasts in the car/jogging/hang-gliding and I never look at my phone screen so this is a bit useless, isn’t it?

Yes, if you can’t look at your phone it’s not really going to be of much use. But if you want to support the people who made the podcast then possibly you can take a breather and click on a link to support them or we could leave you a list of links you can click on afterwards. We’re still working this out – so please get in touch if you have thoughts.

Isn’t this pointless if Apple/Spotify/others don’t support it?

Yes, this project is only the first part of what we would need to do to make this happen on an industry level but we hope we can create an open system everyone can buy into.

We’re open sourcing all of our work, including a demo app people can use to test how this whole things works. We’re also going to do some research on how people react to these notifications, so that everyone can get a better understanding of the benefits and best-use cases for this innovation.