Challenge

The task was to design and develop a mobile application for Radio Humber Station including some features from existing website but with improved user experience and visual treatment.

The app contains Player, Listening History, Ratings, Events, Discussion Board, Recommendations, and option that allows a user to upload own music.

Solution

Though the target audience of Radio Humber is Humber College students and instructors, it appeared that only a few people among all interviewed listen to it regularly. However, this number significantly increased while interviewing students from the music programs. They actively participate in station's competitions but wish uploading process to be faster and less complicated.

After working with all received information and outlining a task flow, I started sketching key components and composition. During this process, I needed a constant feedback from potential users as the app has many features. During that stage, I worked with five students from Jazz Certificate program who showed their sincere interest in the project success.

For eye tracking testing I prepared actual size handcrafted iphone and some screens with main navigation controls. As my paper prototype was highly detailed, user's attention was slightly destructed during completing the task.

Though the eye tracking testing showed quite good results, I still had to improve the task flow. It helped me to build solid low fidelity wireframes oriented on user's needs.

I designed two versions of the player: the main screen with track info, album cover, sharing and favoriting options and a light mini version that appears on all next screens.

After testing the wireframes I made some light improvements in composition. Now it starts with welcoming screen with vertical scrolling and animated characters, it contains the logo and Get Started button.

After tapping More Fun button on Player screen user can find ratings, recently played songs, events, recommendations, and file upload button.

Radio Humber uses a certain shade of blue in their design for many years, so for the brand consistency I used it as the primary color of the app as well.

I added some elements of storytelling to the app and created custom vector graphic for a splash screen.