Liz Kucharska
Sr.product designer
+ design coach
account creation
One of Audacy's primary goals is to increase TLH (Total Listening Hours) for users. TLH is a great KPI for user retention, and allowing users to find their favorite and local content is crucial to Audacy's success. The benefits of user registration is saving Favorite Stations, Subscribing to Podcasts, and having the ability to continue listening to unfinished episodes. Registered users also get access to exclusive contests, recommendations, and will have additional personalized feeds in the future. The old user registration system was not capturing enough information that Audacy needed for users, such as relevant Ad targeting and analytics, and was not built on a system that could handle multi-platform Login. This was a pretty big problem, as Audacy prioritized the development of user Login on multiple devices to remain competitive in the audio streaming universe.
Where:
Audacy
When:
2020

//PROCESS//

Revised Onboarding
The team determined onboarding should remain minimal but could use a refreshed look. The primary objective though was to take the user straight into Enabling Location. Doing so would give users Local Stations and Local Podcasts as well as Local RSS feeds, which is desired since being connected to the community and getting local news is a successful metric.
Unfortunately, onboarding was de-prioritized and didn't make it into the final build of the new Reg flow. The designs here have not been Audacy re-branded as a result.

Age Verification
We had to make it clear to users why additional info was required if their age fell between 12-13 years old based on the year they selected. There was no initial need to ask for Birth Month or Birth Day, however it was a requirement to add those fields if the selected birth year was 2008. This ensured that legalities were being met and users understood the extra steps involved in creating their account.

Opportunities
After studying the old version of the registration flow, we identified some key opportunities for improvement from a User and Business perspective:
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There was no ability to sign up with Apple ID or Google accounts, which users already trust as a secure way of providing personal information
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Gender selectors only included Male and Female options, and as an inclusive platform there was desire to add more options for other gender identities
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In order to sign up, a user has to be 13 years of age or older, which wasn't clear in this design and caused frustration
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Password creation could be improved with the removal of "Confirm Password" field and a Show/Hide icon as a small but useful adjustment
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Current Onboarding didn't explain the benefit of having Location Settings enabled to serve local station content to the user, this was a missed opportunity for serve local content to users who may have turned off Location Settings
Key Takeaways and Findings
Assuring that users can register and login on multiple platforms is an expectation that Audacy was not fulfilling. This project has helped shape the future of Audacy as a trusted source of audio streaming, with continuity between devices. Using a new service for registering users was a game of constant discovery, multiple adjustments, sporadic dependencies, and a lot of collaboration with engineering. Even though not every screen and state made it into the shipped version of the product, (such as onboarding) this new approach was a crucial step forward for Audacy.
After receiving a basic systems-related flow from the Product Owner, I have created an interface flow to communicate the general logic of our new user registration to the stakeholders. The use of an interface flow worked best for the Audacy team due to being more visual and easier to understand contextually. The system we were proceeding with in this new Registration was a web-based backend called oAuth. Using this service was new for the engineering team, so there were many adjustments and discoveries that had to be made along the way. The benefit of using oAuth was that it handles Mobile, Web, and OTT services which would fill the need for multi-platform login, and is also a secure system with built-in error and validation handling.
Requirements discovered:
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Initial entry of the flow is in-app, however once a user enters registration, the remainder is handled in Webview
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oAuth validated the user's birth date, however states had to be designed for additional age verification if a user could be between 12-13 years old
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If user had chosen to Register with Facebook, they could only proceed if Permissions to view Email and Gender were turned on, otherwise the system would return an error
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Password requirements had to be clear throughout the experience to reduce frustration mid-flow as discovered through previous research
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Since Web and Mobile were using the same registration system, designs had to be flexible, responsive, and consistent
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Improving the onboarding experience was desired to increase the use of Location Services as a secondary requirement


New Registration Designs
Taking inspiration from some favorite registration experiences has shaped these designs into a more friendly, welcoming, and concise account registration. The use of a step-counter is always a nice-to-have and separating each step allowed Audacy to provide more context as to why the information was required to finish registration. In this version, Apple ID sign-up and Sign-in was added, however Google was not prioritized by the product owner at the time.
The use of friendly color-branded images added a bit of life to the process and was well-received by users when tested against versions that didn't include images. Users appreciated the new Gender selections, which reflects Audacy positively as a platform that recognizes and welcomes different gender identities.

OTT Registration
With oAuth, Audacy was able to work in OTT (Roku & X1) registration as a future state. User Registration is currently not available on OTT devices, however once User Accounts are enabled, this will be easy to add without creating an entirely new flow.