melisten

melisten is Mediacorp's audio-entertainment platform, giving audiences access to the full suite of Mediacorp's radio stations, on-demand content, and podcasts. By the time the revamp began, the app had been running for a few years without a meaningful design update — and without any formal user research to understand how people were actually using it.

The opportunity was significant: a full UI revamp across the entire app, a chance to rethink how content was surfaced and discovered, and — for the first time — a structured effort to understand user behaviour, preferences, and needs before a single screen was redesigned.

I was part of a lean team of three designers. The senior designer led overall design direction; I led the UI redesign, and was deeply involved across the end-to-end process — from early research through to production support alongside engineering and QA.

The revamp was comprehensive — touching every major part of the app experience, and later extending to a web redesign built on the same design language. Each area required its own set of decisions, but all of them fed into a consistent, unified experience.

Before any screens were redesigned, the team conducted user interviews with external melisten users — the first time structured research had been brought into the product's development. The goal was straightforward: understand how people listened, what they valued, and where the existing experience was letting them down.

What emerged was a richer picture than the team had anticipated. Users related to melisten differently from how they related to Spotify or Apple Podcasts. The app's connection to Mediacorp's radio stations meant that for many users, listening was habitual and ambient — tied to routines, commutes, and a sense of companionship rather than active content curation. That insight shaped design decisions across navigation, content hierarchy, and the player experience.

Usability testing before launch gave the team a structured way to pressure-test the redesign against real user behaviour. Issues surfaced in testing were addressed before release — a discipline that contributed directly to the strong post-launch satisfaction scores.

My involvement went beyond visual design. As the UI design lead within the team, I was present throughout the full product development cycle — from early research and concepting through to working directly with engineers on implementation and with QA on final quality checks.