My Stations: Bringing Personalisation to the Live Radio Listening Experience on Global Player
For years, Global Player’s live radio experience was built around station browsing, requiring users to manually scroll through a long list stations to find what they wanted. While this worked, it lacked the personalised feel users had come to expect from modern media platforms.
“My Stations” aimed to streamline discovery allowing users to compile personal go-to station lists, thus making the experience quicker, more user-friendly, and customised to individual listening preferences.
Role: Lead UX Designer
Team: Product, UX, Engineering, Research, Stakeholders
Duration: 6 months
Key Focus Areas: User personalisation, navigation improvements, engagement optimisation
A Static Experience in a Dynamic World
User feedback and behavioural data revealed that listeners were struggling with:
🚨 Difficult Navigation: Users had to sift through a long list of stations every time they wanted to switch, leading to frustration.
🚨 No Personalisation: Unlike music streaming apps, the platform didn’t allow users to “save” stations for easy access, making switching between favourites inefficient.
🚨Reduced Engagement: Listeners were spending too much time searching and not enough time engaging, leading to drop-offs.
Our challenge was clear: How might we make station switching frictionless while allowing users to build a personalised radio experience?
“I only ever listen to three stations, but I have to scroll past 30 others every time—why can’t I just save my favourites?”
App User
Feedback
Our challenge was clear: How might we make station switching frictionless while allowing users to build a personalised radio experience?
Listening to the Listeners
To understand our user's needs, we collated qualitative insights from surveys, user interviews, and app reviews.
🔎 Key Research Insights
Users wanted fewer taps and scrolls to access their favourite stations.
70% of active users only listen to 1 station
30% of active users listen between 2 to 5 stations.
Station-switching time was a major friction point, leading to frustration.
📊 Supporting Data
⏳ Avg. time to find a station: 30 seconds
🔄 Avg. station switches per session: 2.2 per user
From Concept to Prototype
With clear pain points identified, we brainstormed potential solutions, sketched out user flows, and built interactive prototypes.
Initial wireframes
I focused on reducing cognitive load by introducing “My Stations” in the top nav of the Live Radio tab.
Validation & Usability testing
With surveys and internal usability testing, I vallidated that users found the new layout easier to navigate, confirming our hypothesis that personalisation would reduce friction.
Designing many mockups & prototypes
Multiple mockups and prototypes were tested to determine optimal button placement, interaction patterns, and user experience.
My Stations Project Miro Board: Wow… SO ORGANISED! 👀
Key Design Functionalities
✅ Added "My Stations" to the Top Nav on the Live Radio tab.
✅ Reduced the number of taps needed to start listening from three to one.
✅ Added a “+” button for users to instantly add stations to their personalised list.
✅ Ability to drag and drop stations to easily manage the order of their list.
✅ Added navigation from a vertical list to give users more flexibility on how they navigate
A Personalised Radio Hub
The “My Stations” functionality has revolutionised the way users engage with Global Player's live radio.
A significant 70% of users are seen to have designated the least number of requisite stations (7 stations), while other usage trends consist of merely reorganizing the entire catalog of stations.
This suggests that the constraint on numbers and the necessity to personalise by eliminating from their list rather than adding by default, establishes a comprehensive commitment-task that users are unlikely to undertake unless they strictly want to view only 1 or 2 stations.
📌 Favourites First – Users can now pin their go-to stations, cutting down discovery time and bringing them closer to their favourite stations.
🔄 Swipe to Switch – Quick-swipe interaction improvements let users seamlessly cycle through their favourite stations, while optimising the UI performance load.
🎨 Modern UI – The updated designs modernise the look and feel of the traditional live radio experience and provides support dark theme interfaces.
My Stations Modal - Live Version
A More Engaging Listening Experience
Within the first month post-launch, we observed a significant improvement in usability metrics:
📈 Engagement Up: Station switches increased from 9 to 14 per session 🎧
⏳ Faster Discovery: Avg. time to find a station dropped from 30 seconds to 18 seconds
🎯 Higher Satisfaction: App feedback responses showed a 17% increase in ease-of-use ratings
🚀 Business Impact: Drove 12% uplift in daily active listeners and reduced app abandonment by 7%.
Key Learnings & Reflections
Every project is an opportunity to learn and refine. Here’s what stood out:
✔ User research is the foundation: Validating assumptions early helped avoid unnecessary design pivots.
✔ Small changes = big impact: Reducing taps and improving layout had a significant effect on engagement.
✔ Onboarding matters: A brief guided tour increased feature adoption by 21%.
Final Thoughts
“My Stations” turned a long-standing user pain point into a seamless, intuitive experience. By prioritising personalisation and reducing friction, we made live radio feel as effortless as a music streaming app.
🎧 Next Steps:
Monitor long-term engagement data to optimise how users organise their stations.
Explore deeper personalisation options, such as recently played stations and smart recommendations.
👉 Ultimately, this project taught me that sometimes great UX isn’t about adding more—it’s about making what exists work better.