iHeartRadio Apple TV App
2015 | STREAMING MEDIA, OTT | Apple TV 4th Gen
iHeartRadio partnered with Apple as a launch app for Apple TV 4th Generation, expanding the product from mobile into the living-room environment.
Early heuristic analysis of iHeartRadio’s mobile and previous TV experiences revealed usability issues that would become more pronounced on large screens.
Role: UX/UI Designer
Led UX exploration, usability improvements, and collaboration with product and engineering.
Key Challenges
Heuristic analysis surfaced four key problems:
• Users lacked onboarding that explained iHeartRadio’s value
• Navigation conflicted with Apple TV’s focus-based interaction model
• Recommendations relied mainly on genre and location
• Recently played stations were buried in randomized lists
These issues made it harder for users to understand the product and quickly resume listening.
Vision
Create an Apple TV experience that follows native Apple TV navigation patterns while delivering a cinematic browsing experience for discovering stations.
Goals:
• Reduce friction in discovery and resume listening
• Surface relevant stations quickly
• Align with Apple TV HIG interaction patterns
Recommendation: Recently Played
Solutions
Onboarding
Problem: New users did not clearly understand the value of creating an account.
Solution: Designed an immersive onboarding flow using lifestyle imagery and concise messaging to communicate the benefits of personalized listening.
Content Discovery
Problem: Recommendations were limited to genre and location.
Solution: Introduced multi-carousel browsing to surface recently played, genre-based, local, and popular stations, improving discovery speed.
Recently Played
Problem: Listening history was buried in randomized lists.
Solution: Added a Recently Played section to help users quickly resume stations they had previously engaged with.
Apple TV Navigation Alignment
Problem: Custom navigation patterns conflicted with Apple TV interaction expectations.
Solution: Adopted Apple TV’s native focus-based navigation to ensure predictable browsing using the remote.
Visual Experience
Problem: Station lists felt static on large screens.
Solution: Designed layered station tiles with animated states to create a more dynamic OTT browsing experience.
Tradeoffs
Due to launch timing:
• Custom navigation patterns for deeper discovery were not implemented
• Advanced recommendation inputs were deferred (eg: Based on likes, because you listened to, etc”
Custom navigation
Apple TV default navigation
Results
Business Impact
• Featured during Apple TV’s hardware launch
• Continues to contribute to roughly 300K new registrations per month
User Feedback
Users praised the sleek visual design, animations, and improved discovery of recent and relevant content.
Outcome
The Apple TV launch expanded iHeartRadio into the OTT ecosystem and established a design foundation for future TV platform experiences.