Gathering Stakeholder input
We started this project by running an exercise to get stakeholder input into Onboarding. This involved asking stakeholders to write their thoughts on post it notes under 4 different headings:
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How can we make personalisation great?
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Goals & Expectations for personalisation
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Concerns and challenges
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What do we need to do to keep up with our peers?
They were given 5 minutes for each heading. We then consolidated the feedback into themes.
Personas and User Research
We also looked at the research that had gone into creating user personas, along with the research conducted by the marketing and editorial teams into audience engagement with personalisation.
This gave us a good insight into the key areas we could focus on when approaching the onboarding journey.
Distilling the research and feedback
We took the feedback from Stakeholders and the user research and distilled this into key areas of focus for personalisation. These were:
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Focus on the BBC USP
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Allow teams to release quicker with less blockers
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Improve the feedback loop that the user gets when they listen to content
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Increase content engagement
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Improve peoples awareness of MyRadio - i.e better onboarding
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Improve the consistency across the whole experience
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Improve sharing
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Make personalisation obvious, intuitive and effortless
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Give the user more control
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Get recommendations right
Crazy 8s and Beetles
We asked stakeholders to start by putting ideas around the statement on to post it notes. We asked them to stick them up o the wall and each explain them. We then asked them to do Crazy 8s - drawing ideas to solve some of the problems that came up in the post it notes. Once completed we asked people to dot vote on the ideas.
Once we had done the Crazy 8s we then asked the design team to expand the ideas by doing 'Beetles' which involved putting more thought into a specific idea and building it around a users needs.
Top Beetle Ideas
The top four ideas that came out of the Beetle workshop were:
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Daily Download
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The Switcher
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Mood Generated Radio
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Personalised Dial Stations
From this we deciced to focus on one idea for Onboarding, which was Personalised Dial Stations.
User Testing the Invision Concept Journey
Taking workshop ideas into prototype, I built a concept journey in InVision exploring a personalised onboarding experience for iPlayer Radio.
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The concept
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The idea was that new users could build their own radio station on arrival, selecting preferences that would shape both a personalised dial. Showing only their favourite stations, and a content stream tailored to their listening habits. Users could continue adding to the stream over time.
Once the prototype was built, I took it into lab testing with users.
Onboarding Concept User testing Results
The prototype test generated strong insight and clear direction for the onboarding journey.
Key findings:
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The personalised dial was well received. Users felt it made content easier to discover, with stations more accessible than before
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Several users compared it to a car radio, which felt intuitive and familiar
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Users expressed appetite for a community dimension, following others, social discovery
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While the prototype was easy to navigate, personalisation felt like too much upfront effort. Users wanted it to feel effortless and embedded, not earned
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Contextual guidance, such as video walkthroughs, was flagged as a potential solution
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Together, the workshop, user input, and prototype testing gave the team a strong foundation to move forward with a My Radio onboarding experience.
