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OTT Next Audio
I took Mediastream’s white-label streaming platform, built for video, and adapted it for audio, opening the door to new clients and letting our existing video clients add a listening app without switching systems.
Company
Mediastream
Timeline
2021 – 2025
Role
End-to-end Product Designer
Platforms
Web · Mobile · TV
Problem
OTT Next was built for video, so clients in the audio industry had to squeeze their content into a video-first experience and the components they had available didn’t visually align to standard patterns, or we had to build custom platforms which took longer than necessary.
Goal
Design an audio-first experience inside the same white-label platform: components each client could brand and use on web, mobile and TV. Building on the existing design system meant audio could launch fast and live next to video, without a separate product.
Audio is not just video without the picture
Watching is a foreground activity: you pick something, sit down and give it your eyes. Listening happens in the background while you may be doing something else, either browsing the web on desktop, chatting on your phone or even cooking or working while at home. We began the project with three assumptions:
01
Playback is tied to a page
Leaving the page is the normal state, so playback has to survive navigation, regardless the device.
02
You pick one thing at a time
People want to know what’s coming next: queue episodes, build playlists, or check the radio schedule to see what’s playing later.
03
The content fills the screen
In audio there’s nothing to watch. The artwork, the player and live signals have to carry the screen and show what’s playing at a glance.
Features and components
Persistent Player
A mini player docked above the navigation that follows people across the app.
Hero Player
A full-screen player for live radio and on-demand audio.
Podcasts & episodes
Show and episode pages built for scanning: seasons, durations, publish dates and descriptions.
Featured Podcasts Slider
An editorial carousel that lets each client spotlight shows or episodes on the home.
Keep Listening Slider
A dynamic, shortcut carousel that lets users pick up where they left off, right on the home screen.
One component, every screen
Each component was designed once and adapted to three ways of using it: touch on mobile, mouse and keyboard on web, and the remote on TV. The structure and the tokens stayed the same.
Outcome
8+
audio platforms launched by media companies, on the same system as OTT Next video
1 week
to launch a new audio client on the existing system, without any custom development.
10+
new audio components and variants added to the design system.
What I learned
The most challenging part of this project wasn’t designing new components. It was deciding which existing ones we could reuse, understanding how people use each device and, above all, creating a brand-agnostic experience that every client could make their own.
