As part of my never ending quest to be a better product person, I’ve been making mockups. After taking a Learn Sketch course I was itching to apply what I learned to a real-world problem. As a Howard Stern fan I’ve found the Sirius iOS User Experience frustrating. I crave a less cluttered, easier-to-use app designed for hardcore Howard Stern fans like myself.

A Solo Howard Stern App

Supporting the hundreds of Sirius channels brings a lot of UI baggage. Making a dedicated Howard App allowed me to get rid of numerous pages and the bottom bar.

Sirius

With one focus, the Home screen can be simple and clean. Search is at the top of the screen, below you may browse. The UI brings attention to a Live show since no content is better than Live content.

My Mockup

 

The Sirius UI for downloaded shows is good but has room for improvement. The thin fonts and pale colors are difficult to read and there are many colors in use.

My mockup has two colors with only the most relevant information for easy reading.

The Player

The Sirius player takes up a lot of real estate for the background photo and title of the show.

I shrunk the the amount of space for a photo and considered removing it completely. That space would not be a static photo of the logo but would allow for a multi-media experience. Photos relevant to the segment, like a photo of a guest, would work great.

Navigating the Shows

The Sirius app allows a week’s worth of shows available for “On Demand” download for a limited time.

I envision access to the entire Howard Stern content library available for download. Another goal of this app is to expose new listeners to a taste of Howard Stern content. All content should have a degree of shareability. Allowing a user to share clips of a show via SoundCloud as they do now is a great start. Sharing Phony Phone Calls and Song Parodies are a perfect way to give people a taste of Howard.

   

 

Search

With access to 40 years of content the user must have a good Search to find what they are looking for. I’ve moved Search to be front and center in home. The results have labels with the most relevant information. It’ll be key to create a search based on machine learning that will improve overtime.

New Features

The Howard Stern Alarm Clock, Auto-downloading new shows and playing Sirius on an Amazon Echo are features I’d use everyday. 

Inspiration for the Settings and Devices page came from Overcast and Spotify.

 

 

Note – I used Sketch to create the mockups. I choose Open Sans as the font and downloaded it from Google Fonts. The Twitter and Facebook icons are from IconMoon. I wrapped the designs with iPhone chrome using MockUPhone. I learned about these resources through an excellent designer, Julian Haddad, who I worked with at Social Tables.