Radioplayer on a radio - a user experience triumph

On Sunday night I wanted to listen to the excellent "Q the 80s", a programme I'd seen promoted on Twitter. This is on a station called "Q Radio" in the UK; so I turned on my DAB radio, and scanned in vain through the station names: it turns out it isn't on DAB in London. I flicked to internet radio mode, and did a search for "Q" - which didn't find anything relevant; for some reason that station isn't on my Pinnell Supersound II. I turned on the telly, and found it on Freeview.

This is not a good user experience.

As I'm saying a fair amount in my conference speeches, in the analogue world (and even in the HD Radio world) we bizarrely expect listeners to tune in using frequencies, not station names. Multi-platform radios start with a menu listing a bewildering choice of platforms, when the only thing anyone wants is content.

I notice that I haven't blogged about the Radioplayer concept radio, which is a foolish thing, because it was unveiled at the Radio Festival last November, and I had a peek of it later that month.

It was introduced to me as a concept radio - "much like car manufacturers build concept cars", said the Managing Director of UK Radioplayer, Michael Hill. The radio was playing BBC Radio 1. On the screen is some vibrant colour now-playing images (courtesy of RadioDNS's RadioVIS service): and a list of other station logos on the left-hand side. Find a station you like... and click it to tune in.

Using RadioDNS's Hybrid Radio EPG, it is bright enough to know how to find a radio service. His demo to me included flicking over to XFM Manchester, which was accompanied by a burst of FM static, followed by the tuner correctly assuming that it wasn't available on FM and popping over to the internet.

And then, he gave a surprising demonstration of his addiction to The Archers: which I'll leave as a surprise for you if you watch the YouTube video below.

After working on the RadioDNS project as a founder partner in 2007, it was incredibly gratifying to see a hybrid radio concept up and working. A connected radio needn't only mean something that's a slave to the internet; indeed, RadioDNS's Hybrid Radio EPG allows broadcasters to 'prefer' different platforms depending on their distribution strategy. And all the user sees is the station name. Perfect.

This month, I stood down from my position as Secretary of the RadioDNS Project, and retired from the organisation. It's time for someone new to help the project move forward - and I'm delighted to see Mathias Coinchon from the EBU be elected in my place. But if this is the type of user experience we can expect from RadioDNS, I'll be one very excited, and proud, spectator.

Watch this.



Disclosure: UK Radioplayer and Radioplayer Worldwide are both clients of mine. I was a founder of RadioDNS. The EBU once bought me a warm can of Heineken.