iHeartRadio for Android
Despite the popularity of smartphones, desktop apps remain the foundation for most any music service, and that's especially true for iHeartRadio. Desktop apps showcase the full range of product features, and allow users more control at every step. As the iHeartRadio app offering grew over the years, the old iHeart.com design started to show its age, becoming difficult to navigate in comparison to the mobile versions. To fix the problem, a striking web redesign — taking cues from mobile successes — helped strip out clutter, introduce a clear flow and better promote key features, all in a responsive layout.
Android has long dominated the smartphone market when it comes to number of users, due in no small part to the variety of devices, manufacturers, carriers and costs. Although this variety has allowed many consumers to find their ideal device, this fragmentation has proved significantly more challenging for iHeartRadio, when compared to iPhone. Creating a single app for all Android users meant creating customizable designs to suit each shape and size of device. As Android grew and optimized, iHeartRadio met and exceeded the visual and technical standards of both Google and users themselves.
For the iHeartRadio app to work on any device size, each element was carefully outlined to show how it would adapt at each break point. Identifying primary, secondary and tertiary priorities for each device size and orientation allowed the app to deliver a clean user experience with consistent organization.
The iHeartRadio player design with full-screen album art remains best at home on the Android, where in a later OS version, the lockscreen came to mirror the same edge-to-edge album art implementation for a seamless experience.
With one app, the iHeartRadio team was able to integrate into every Android platform. From Chromecast to Android Auto to the Android Wear watch, one quick app download gives users the same access to their favorite music and stations, no matter where they are.