AM750 Radio

UX Research / UI Design

About the project

Am750 is a radio streaming which belongs to Grupo Octubre. It has been 10 years on air and is the house of a lot of famous hosts in Argentina. Between 2015-2019 it had a sustained growth in audience and seeks to position itself as one of the most impotant radios. The digital product team is asked to carry out a redesign that allows to increase the digital audience

My role

UX/UI Designer

Duration

4 meses

Product

Radio digital Am750

Problems

  • The website is developed from a template, which generates technical difficulties for the entire team.
  • There is no information about the users, their behaviors and pain points.
  • There is no defined user path, therefore, there is content that remains invisible.
  • There is no knowledge about the users since a UX research was never done

Internal objectives

1

More interactions

Promote interactions on out website and reduce the bounce rate

2

Increase the audience

Promote the growth of users who listen to AM 750 through the website

3

Better user experience

Design and develop a websote which satisfy the user needs.

How to conduct research on old aged users in the during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Roadmap

Having a short period of time, we decided to adjust the roadmap considering it a starting point. We define a qualitative methodology, in order to identify the main needs of the users and understand the reason for the behaviors. We only analyze metrics at the beginning of the project to establish hypotheses and goals.

1.Data analysis

2.Define objectives

3. Hypothesis

4.Script and interviews

5.Interviews analysis

6.Insights

Research questions

The research questions are oriented to define the parameters of the investigation. We start from a general question and then those which are related with the epistemological objectives.

General research question

How do 750 listeners interact with the radio website?

Specific research questions

  • How do they consume the content?
  • What value does the radio provide?
  • Which are the website's pain points?

User hypotesis*

Radio lovers

People with an emotional connection with the radio. They start listening to it very early in the morning and have it all day on. They identify themselves ideologically with the radio.

Host/Shows fans

Users who have been fans of one of the hosts for years. They listen to their shows regardless of the radio they are on. These users are subdivided into those who identify ideologically and those who are fans of cultural programs in spite of the radio ideology.

Occasional users

They are people who occasionally listen to the radio. They may or may not be ideologically related.

*Based on data

Interviews

It was decided to carry out individual interviews since we needed to understand the individual experience and the emotional connection with the product, in addition to understanding the reasons for the actions that we saw reflected in the metrics. Individual interviews, allowed people to express more comfortably about their contexts, ideologies and frustrations. We conducted 16 interviews with people who were linked to the hypotesis that we had defined with the metrics.

Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to conduct interviews remotely. When performing them during the first months of confinement, people were still learning how to use videoconference apps

More than 50% of our users are +55 years old and more than 20% are +65 years old. We estimated that there would be difficulties when trying to conduct interviews virtually

AM750 user being interviewed

“Sometimes I surf the site while listening to the radio”

“Radio is about here and now”

“It's hard for me to read long notes, I'm looking for a summary”

“I prefer short audio segments than to entire programs”

Insights

  • They value radio news briefings because occasional users are short on time.
  • Users do daily activities while listening to the radio, which sometimes causes them to lose information. This is why they value having a STOP button
  • Occasional users visit different online radio sites because it is the equivalent of “channel-hopping”.
  • They don't enter the site exclusively through the homepage, there are multiple entrances to the site. Many users search for the show or host they like on Google and go directly to the internal show page. They stay there to listen to the radio and navigate from that
  • Users do not scroll on the site, that is why they do not know that there is non-news content as in the case of radio dramas despite the fact that they express interest in listening to them.
  • For users it is very important to share content they listen on the radio especially on Facebook and Whatsapp, as conversation starters with their friends and family

Personas

Marisol Herrera

62 years old. Retired

Who is Marisol?

She is retired and listens to the radio since it started. She turns it on in the morning and she turns it off when she falls asleep. She says that she prefers traditional radio, but hers broke and AM radios are not on sale any more.

Marital status

Married

Children

2

Socioeconomic level

C2

Habits

She gets up very early, almost at dawn. When she's just finished brushing his teeth, turns on the notebook that his son left him and opens the direct access to AM750 website. She press play button and doesn't turn it off until he goes to bed. She sometimes sends messages to the radio for Victor Hugo Morales to read. If she wants to share a fragment of a program, she enter to radio cut website and sends it by whatsapp

Objectives
  • Feeling accompanied at home by your favorite journalists.
  • Interact with people of the same interests
  • Be able to listen a show which she had missed
  • Share notices with friends and family on Whatsapp.
Habilities
  • She doesn't know how to use the computer, she only knows how to enter to AM750 and Radio Cut websites.
  • She uses Whatsapp on her mobile phone, at first she was a bit suspicious about using a mobile phone, but now she is used to. .
  • She is very sociable, she likes talking to people.

Julián Lorenzi

43 years old. Teacher

Who is Julián?

Julián is a high school history teacher at a public school. Although he considers himself progressive, He likes to read different media to be able to find out more about what is happening in the country.

Marital status

Divorced

Children

1

Socioeconomic level

C3

Habits

He gets up at 6 am to prepare his class and takes the bus to work. Since he lives a bit far away, he likes reading the news of the day on the trip. Occasionally he listens to the radio but prefers to read short notices because he doesn't have time to listen to a whole show episode.

Objectives
  • Get quickly informed about what is happening in the country.
  • Read different medias websites, whith different ideologies, in order to have a more "objective" approach to the reality.
Habilities
  • He knows how to use a computer since he has to use it for his job.
  • He uses Spotify and Soundcloud. He is not keen on usign social media, he only has Facebook but doesn't upload anything.
  • Because of his job, he is used to read complex texts.

Laura Ruiz

33 years old. Lawyer

Who is Laura?

Laura is a self-demanding person. She has been working as a lawyer for 10 years and has managed to grow in her profession. However, she has little time for her. She likes lot reading novels and going to the theater, but unfortunately she doesn't find many spaces for that now.

Marital status

Single

Children

0

Socioeconomic level

ABC1

Habits

Laura considers herself as a workaholic person. She would like to have time to read the newspapers but the truth is that she ends up finding out about news from what she listens to in the office. Her favorite moment of her day is when she finally turns off the PC and lies in bed to listen to “Revenge will be terrible”, a show that she listens because a of her mother, who was a fan.

Objectives
  • Entertain and distract from work.
  • Go to the theater or read books that were recommended on the radio.
  • Listen old programs she'd missed
Habilities
  • He uses the PC perfectly but exclusively for work.
  • She uses social media, mostly when she is eating.

UX Recommendations

Player

  • The current player does not provide the needs required by the user, so they look for it on other sites (Like Radiocut).
  • Currently the player is a button at the top of the site, this means that many casual users do not see it. A more modern player (Spotify Type) can be added at the bottom to make it more visible and allow more features to be added.
  • It is important not to remove the top button because users are used to using it.

New player

Information architecture

  • Users are used to going in and hit the player button. Currently the only thing they see when entering is a only featured new content.
  • It is necessary to show them the content in a different way so that they understand that there is more content available. It is suggested to add more entries in the first scroll to encourage navigation.
  • You can make a dynamic website that changes the content it displays depending on the time of day to match the radio air. Current news should appear in its morning version and starting at 7 pm, show on the front page notes related to cultural and humor shows.
  • Most of the users already know the programming or the schedule of their favorite program, therefore the space dedicated to this in the home page can be used in another way.

Process: Redesign architecture

Userflow

  • Users do not enter exclusively through the home as previously thought. Many google their favorite journalist and enter through the internal program to listen to the radio live.
  • The internal pages of the site are not designed to redirect the flow of the user to sections that are of interest to them.
  • It is suggested to redesign the "Show schedule" and "Shows" page so that they are not a dead end for the user and, instead, can capture areas of interest to increase the pages per session.

Process: Design of userflow to listen to an audio cut

Accessibily

  • Most of our users are over 40 years old. From that age, people begin to lose vision, hearing, and motor skills.
  • Several of our interviewees showed difficulties related to this type of inconvenience
  • It is suggested to adapt the website to the WCAG 2.1 (AA) standards in order to provide an accessible and inclusive site to all our users.

Accessibility report

Results

Audience

We reached our goal of 1 million of unique users

We reduce the bounce rate and double the pages per session

Searchs

We doubled the performance in the Google search results

We achieved growth held on Google News.

Structure

A total redesign of the site was carried out, redefining user flows and information architecture.

We considerably improved our indexes of accessibility, reducing errors to “force majeure” situations

Visibility was given to special contents of the site, generating a dynamic cover, achieving greater user interaction with them.