Road Radio
UX Research | UX/UI Design
Offering drivers personalized, safe, and reliable upcoming radio stations for road trips.
Imagine you’re going on a road trip and want to know what the local station is as you drive through towns without scrolling through all the channels manually.
What if there was a radio app that tells you about upcoming, reliable stations and when to change to other stations as you’re driving?
Our client had this idea for a radio app while driving to visit his father in Minnesota.
Problem Statement
How might we design an easy and safe way to access upcoming radio stations on road trips for users so they don’t have to change stations manually.
Solution
Road Radio makes routine drives and long trips hands-free, personalized, and enjoyable because they don’t have to change stations manually.
Duration
3-week sprint
Tools
Jamboard & Miro for whiteboarding and brainstorming
Mockups & Prototype in Figma
Interviews & Testing over Zoom.
My Role
Team Facilitator & UX/UI Designer
Challenges
Audience & Demographics
Connection Problems
Safety & Accessibility
Involvement & Competitors
How Might We…
Technical | Safety | Simplicity
UX Research
During the discovery phase, the UXer's conducted user surveys in order to understand the problem, get an idea of how many people actually use the radio these days, and understand what they listen to and why.
What type of music do you like?
The Key Insights
People enjoy listening to the radio for very specific reasons like:
local community connections and information,
talk radio, and
general interest in the radio.
Personas
Based on the surveys, we set up two very different personas.
We referred to them throughout the entire product development process because they reflected our target audience.
This was our main focus persona, Jack.
He’s a similar age to our client and has similar needs, wants, and goals.
He wants good music to listen to while he’s traveling across different towns and doesn’t want the hassle of looking for a station with static.
Originally, we thought users would be older folks.
We found that most of our users were females from 25-40 years of age.
This information definitely influenced our design decisions to reflect a more feminine color palette of pinks and inclusive colors for all like blues hues.
Empathy Maps
“Maria feels as free as a bird when accessing local radio stations on her commute to school.”
“Jack feels relaxed when he’s able to easily find local, static-free radio stations while on his drive to visit his grandkids.”
User Stories & Journey Maps
The most important features for the app are to:
Easily and safely search for static-free radio stations while driving
Access to a variety of genres catered to personal preferences
Our Initial Sketches
Safety and Accessibility Sketches
These were our initial solution sketches for safety and accessibility from our ideation stages and after checking in with our client.
The first sketch has wide boxes and should be easily readable while driving.
Easy Listening and Navigation
The sketch shows a map with clear and easy radio listening with navigation.
We also included nearby stations on the map to get that birds-eye view
Logo & Branding
Safe | Reliable | Enjoyable | Simple
The color palette is closely aligned to our design inspiration and meets our target audience of young and old desires. The overall aesthetics achieve accessibility access for our older users with the use of large buttons and text.
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Progression & Simplify
Mockup
Our first mockup of the radio app based on our first interview with our client.
We implemented features he wanted to include such as, large station numbers with arrows for direction.
Progression
We included large text and buttons along with a map for long drives.
Simplify
It’s even easier to click on the station near you to quickly listen to your favorite genre while driving through new towns and cities.
User Testing
We conducted user testing of the current prototype to see what was working and what wasn’t.
This would help us identify pain points with the prototype and create features that could solve them.
14 Users
5 Testers
User Testing Insights on Jamboard
Ease of Use
We kept the interface super simple but also super informative.
User Flow
Users overwhelmingly liked the map option better.
They felt it was really great for road trips and a very simple way of tracking what stations came in clear and where.
Accessibility
5 out of 5 users requested we enhance the size of the buttons to make it easier on them so if they wanted to switch a station mid-drive, it wouldn’t be too much effort.
Reminders
3 out of 5 users actually wanted more alerts to be even more informative and provide information about traffic and other useful tools you might need on a road trip.
We iterated the final screens in Figma.
By catering to the masses who struggle with your everyday unclear static radio, having an option like Road Radio would make routine drives and long trips smooth and enjoyable.
Favorite Features
By discovering who our users were more specifically, we were able to understand what we needed to include to make this app a regular use.
Popular Features
Genre page
Pop-up alerts,
Map, and
Favorites option.
What did we learn?
Our biggest fears would be the competition of other highly notable brands such as Siri XM, iHeart Radio, and Spotify.
We problem solved to really understand our users' interests, likes, dislikes, and the not-so-important features to iterate on our designs continuously.
By focuses in on our clients' main goals and achieving what our users' wants and needs were, we were able to create a unique brand identity for Road Radio.
What People Are Saying
“It would be great for a road trip or any time in the car!”
— Donna
“I feel like I didn’t have to think at all.”
— Luis
“People like reminders and real-time info, especially while traveling.”