Syok! The first Radio & Entertainment App

How to design a solution for music lovers, with different music taste, style, and consumption, so that they can listen to music together?

How can we add more value and make our app different?

We often pondered what can be done for the music world. It is clear that streaming music has become a primary source of how we access music. But what are we listening to and how are we discovering it?

Goal and Objective

Our main intentions behind this were simple - we wanted to design a radio & entertainment app that is an experience, one that is easier to use and provides more features. Entertainment is meant to be enjoyed, so our experiences interacting with it should be too.

We wanted to bring our identity back to one of our roots — Entertainment.

• Providing one happy home for all our babies, we wanted to streamline Astro Radio’s cost of operating & maintaining twelve different apps by combining them into one and that will help drive down cost significantly and reduce time and cost.

• Combining all our users in one place, to create new monetisation opportunities to create a conducive commercial environment for advertisers.

• Let’s be honest, multiple different apps are difficult to maintain, and most of the time companies rely on the band-aid fixes. Quick, cheap but there will be scars.

• To build the Mother App that can be used across our other products, which was first used on our Awani App.

Research

We took out our notebooks, and the games began! Naturally, we started with kick-off meetings with the project stakeholders to understand their goals and reasons for this new venture.

We sparked off debate to understand the different behaviours forming radio & entertainment consumption. All in good nature.

We dug deep into all our existing radio apps, from how the app is performing, how much are we spending on maintenance, how much revenue are we getting, and most importantly does it serve the user’s need?

We benchmarked ourselves against the main competitors mainly Spotify & MeRadio, in terms of features, interaction model, design, transitions, usability and social integration. We checked FB Homepage to get a feel of a platform that people are familiar with.

Key Findings

What do we want? Not just a radio app, we want the radio & entertainment app, all in one – radio, music, videos, articles, and podcast. That would be a first in Malaysia. We liked the idea of being a pioneer.

Learnings

This project was an interesting challenge, the very first project that was focused on the agile method from end-end, requiring the well-thought balance of clear and accessible functionality and stylish visual concept corresponding to the pages of requirement we had in hand.

• We learned to adapt, there was a lot of processes and tools that we were not familiar with, and these specific process and tools eventually grew and became our Digital Ecosystem template.

• Keep your app simple and user-friendly so that people of all age groups can use it.

• It is essential for businesses to think competitively and come up with solutions that are realistic and advantageous to their customers.

• Ideate to introduce new concepts and ideas for features and functionality that would enhance the user experience in the entertainment app, giving an abundance in user choices and controls.

• Created design guidelines to maintain design consistency, with focus on improving usability, not overhauling aesthetics to create a foreign experience; aim for coherence, and regularity through enhancing not eradicating.

• Through brainstorming, we came up with some features and then prioritized them into groups, classifying them as “must have”, “should have”, “could have” and “won’t have”. The features we decided to focus on will add value to the users by providing them.

We worked on this project with a lot of energy, driven by the passion we have for UX/UI and with each other’s support, working on all stages of the agile process.

And on 26th June 2019, Syok! was born. From listening to all your favourite radios in one app, unearthing the latest entertainment news, watching funny videos and other features. Syok became the ultimate music & entertainment app that deserved your ears, and eyes.

Our new features. Here is what we have!

• 26 RADIO CHANNELS, we are still bewildered with this.

(1) ERA - Muzik Hit Terbaik (2) SINAR - Menyinari Hidupmu (3) GEGAR - Permata Pantai Timur (4) ZAYAN - #indahdihati (5) MY - MY, 好玩! (6) MELODY - 心聆听，新体会 (7) GOXUAN - 够Fun

(8) HITZ - All the HITZ, All the time (9) MIX - Today's Best Music (10) LITE - Relaxing Favourites (11) RAAGA - Aaha… Sirantha Isai (12) ERA (Sabah) (13) HITZ (Sabah) (14) MY (Sabah) (15) ERA (Sarawak) (16) HITZ (Sarawak) (17) MY (Sarawak) (18) SYOK Bayu (19) SYOK Gold (20) SYOK India Beat (21) SYOK Jazz (22) SYOK Kenyalang (23) SYOK Opus (24) SYOK Osai (25) SYOK Classic Rock (26) Astro Arena

• EXPLORE SYOK ORIGINALS SYOK Original Videos: Short-form videos tailored especially for Malaysians SYOK Original Podcasts: Exclusive podcasts created by Malaysians for Malaysians

• WIN EXCLUSIVE PRIZES : We've got exciting cash prizes to giveaway. PLUS the hook up to the coolest movies, concerts and events in Malaysia and want YOU to be a part of them.

• ZON SOLAT : Turn on Zon Solat and you will be notified of your prayer times and even to check your kiblat. Oh, don’t forget to allow location access for a better and more accurate experience.

• HIKMAH : Enrich your Ramadan experience with the latest addition to our SYOKcast. Hikmah will take you through the beauty of hardships and struggles along the journey of the Prophet and his companions.

How did we do? From the numbers it's looking pretty good.

Feedback from users

“Great app, especially for user that located at area with inability to reach the frequency of their favourite radio station I hope in future, developer will consider to make this apps able to cast in chromecast 💪🏼”

“It's easy to listen radio anywhere.I Love It❣”

“first impression : high quality audio!”

“I've always love listening to astro radio at home especially india beat & jazz channel. It is sad that i can't listen to them when at work but then i discovered this amazing apps that just make my day! Now i can listen to them anywhere using Syok apps! Thank you Syok!~ Love it so much! 😍😍”

“This is the best app for listening the music on radio and now i can listening my favourite radio at anytime and anywhere”

There is still some work to do on the app to give you better experience than yesterday, but the good news is that we are already working on it!

In the spirit of we have everything under one roof for your radio & entertainment need, the app is currently being updated to house more live content like video streams & chat, interactive games, more original content like podcast shows, or even user-generated ones.

We wouldn’t be here without this fabulous bunch of people that we call Team!

Product : Aaron, CK, Ganesh

UI/UX : Ernest, Shaun, Ethan

Software Engineering : Mobile team (Jeffrey & team), Eng Hin, Sravanthi, Marcus & Astro Radio team