BAUER MEDIA

Project:
The future of online radio

Agency:
Ustwo

Role:
Product Design Lead

Bauer Media set out to reimagine online radio under their new Rayo brand, a unified platform designed to bring listeners back from streaming giants like Spotify and offer a fresh, “new radio” experience.

I joined the project to help define the future state of Bauer’s web offering in just six weeks. Working closely with a product strategist, I led the design effort, from framing the problem to shaping the concept and validating it with real users. Through rapid research, including fifteen stakeholder interviews in four days, we built a clear vision of what the next generation of Bauer’s online radio experience could be.

Building a vision at speed

Shaping early concepts

Based on our initial research, I developed three high-level experience models with the purpose of sparking conversation with stakeholders. These allowed us to test early conceptual thinking and build structure into our interviews.

Uncovering business insights

We interviewed 15 stakeholders from across the business over the course of four days. We started to build a picture of drivers, constraints and emerging business themes surrounding the web proposition. This informed hypotheses for testing.

Mapping user journeys

I developed basic user journeys to start realising our concept.  Through these, we plotted out our hypotheses and identified key screens to design. These were revisited and refined after user testing to create a final vision.

Validating with real users

We conducted moderated tests with six candidates who were either existing users of the current experience or users of close competitor experiences. We tested three propositions alongside a key user journey.

Designing site structures

Based on the data collected from the stakeholder interviews and user testing, I built varying site structures that placed emphasis on different areas of the business. This gave us the opportunity to aid stakeholders in decision making.

Building a UI toolkit

To create the final designs for the vision, I continued to build on the elements we had used for the tests, creating a suite of components that allowed me to design quickly across different scenarios.

Balancing business goals with user needs

Our research revealed that users were loyal to specific stations and focused on a seamless listening experience above all else. Meanwhile, the business needed to drive advertising revenue and surface cross-promotional content.

By balancing these needs, I designed a focused listening experience that aggregated content around users’ habit, making it easier to find favourite stations, shows, and music, while still enabling Bauer to promote competitions and live news.

The result was a near-future vision that successfully aligned business and user priorities, demonstrated through a prototype presented to senior stakeholders. The concept was well received, helping Bauer’s teams align on a shared direction for the next phase of the Rayo web platform.

Project Numbers

2

Team: Designer & Strategist

6

Weeks project duration

15

Stakeholder interviews

6

User tests carried out