Video Go Live

Background

Global Player is home to some of the biggest commercial radio stations in the UK such as Capital Fm, Heart and LBC. There, users can listen to 17 different stations and access exclusive content from their favourite radio brands. The digital listening platform is available natively across mobile, web, smart speakers and TV.

Overview

It's common for radio stations to broadcast live video content such as games, competitions and interviews with special guests. That is normally done via social platforms of the likes of Facebook and Instagram. 

Global has noticed that while users these events produce great engagement, live videos seemed to have an impact on Global Player usage. Alongside my team (PM and Designers),  I was tasked to look into the reasons why that was happening. 

The process

  1. Audit current experience

  2. Conduct user research

  3. Address key pain points

  4. Ideate

  5. Design, Iterate and prototype

  6. Validate solution

Understanding the problem

During conversations with the Analytics department, I was able to look at the data and confirm what was being reported by the business. It showed that some users would leave Global Player as soon as a video went live on social and not come back afterwards.

To understand what was causing the drop in re-engagement, I've worked with the Insights team at Global to arrange user research sessions that included user testing, task analysis and interviews.

Gathering insights

 

User Testing

Participants were asked to complete the following tasks:

  1. Play the radio and wait for a Facebook Live cue

  2. Watch live video content on Facebook Live

  3. Resume listening to the radio

Interviews

After the test, users were asked to answer a series of questions related to the tasked they had just performed.

Task Analysis.

Notes and recordings of the user testing were used to highlight pain points and potential opportunities for improvement.

Findings

We knew the reason why users were leaving Global Player when videos went live - Facebook was the only place where videos were available to watch -  but talking to users helped us understand why they were not coming back. Users were getting distracted by their Facebook timelines.

Once the live session had finished, users would fall for the temptation to scroll down the page and forget to go back to listening to the radio.

That meant the problem in need of solving was how might we remove distractions away from users after the live video is finished?

Ideation

During an ideation session, we realised that every time a presenter mentioned something was about to go live on Facebook, in reality, we were telling users to leave Global Player and go to Facebook.

Because there was no direct link back to our platform and we had no control over what users see on Facebook, the best solution for bringing users back would be to not ask them to leave Global Player in the first place.

Wireframing

A total of 10 UI solutions were sketched on paper a later wireframed. They then went on to be evaluated and scored by how feasible, accessible and scalable they were.

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Validating the designs

 

The best solutions were then converted into medium-fidelity mock-ups by my teammate James Turner-Blackman and ultimately prepared into interactive prototypes. Those were used in a series of user testing done internally. We've used the learnings from these testings to improve upon the existing designs and maximise the chances to succeed.

The winning solutions were one we called 'picture in picture'. It had performed really well in terms of findability and its conversion rates didn't disappoint either.

High-fidelity UI.

Once we had buy-in from the stakeholders, James started producing the high-fidelity screens of the winning solution and preparing them to be handed over to the engineers. 

Results & takeaways

The solution made it easier for users to access our live video content by bridging the gap between radio and video. It also removed the need for leaving our platforms by bringing live videos to Global Player. That meant a reduction in users not to re-engaging with the radio afterwards.

At launch, 'picture in picture' had a massive 70% click-through and currently sustain an average of 25% conversion rate.

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