Allegiance Radio Traffic
Product redesign for a radio traffic tool used to manage contracts, schedule programming, and generate billing & reports.
Overview
Timeframe:
2.5 weeks
Team Size:
4
My Role:
Strategist
UX/UI Designer
Tools:
Figma
Miro
Keynote
​
Looking to open up their radio traffic product to commercial broadcasters, The Allegiance Group partnered with our UX team to help redesign their radio traffic & billing system from a file based product to a web accessible platform.
​
Challenge: To ensure our proposed solution not only showcased a modern UI with simplified flows, but improved usability and felt intuitive to all Allegiance users.
We kept our focus throughout the process with the idea that simplicity boils down to two steps: identify the essential, eliminate the rest. This perspective led my team & I to focus our efforts on the following areas for this redesign:
-
Home Page
-
Underwriting (Contacts)
-
Billing
Methodologies:
Agile | User Interviews | Contextual Inquiry | Affinity Mapping | Personas | Feature Prioritization | Design Studio | Wireframes | Rapid Prototyping | Usability Testing
Client Testimonial:
"I immediately saw improvements to the user interface and validation of the user experience. The team did a great job at honing in on the issues that our clients reported and coming up with better solutions" - Su Sanni, President of Technology Solutions, AFG
The Product
Allegiance Radio Traffic provides traffic logs, digital billing, and production management services to public radio stations across the US.
​
(Allegiance Traffic - Existing Design)
In its current state, the product requires weeks of training when on boarding new clients and has been known to feel “clunky” and "outdated” by users.
Understanding The User
To gain a deeper insight into users’ work flows & behaviors, I conducted user interviews with experienced Allegiance Traffic users to identify where areas of opportunity may lie. Using contextual inquiry, my team & I observed the following key insights and user paint points:
Too many windows and buttons to complete a task

Lack of flexibility with customization and preview
Too much time spent on exact search requirements
Users create manual systems of checks and balances to ensure the system's accuracy
An assumption I held was that an opportunity space would occur in the product's main features of traffic logs and scheduling. To my surprise, our user data showed that the areas containing the most room for improvement fell within the home page, account contacts, and billing.
Meet Katherine
To further empathize with our users and assure their needs were at the forefront, we created our primary persona Katherine to help guide our process. Let's step into her shoes!
Pain Points
Creates external systems to work around what the system doesn’t offer her.
Radio Traffic Manager, WDPR
Dayton, OH
Goals
Reduce the number of unnecessary steps to complete a task.
Katherine Miller
Needs
One clear way to achieve a task.
Behaviors
Has made multiple calls for training and support.
Katherine's Need
Katherine is a seasoned Allegiance Traffic user, but has found that the current system does not provide the things she needs in order to do her job effectively. She needs to perform multiple steps in order to complete her daily tasks.
How might we streamline the Allegiance system to ensure a quick and accurate workflow for users like Katherine??
Developing A Solution
With an understanding of our user and a vision in mind, the team met with our stakeholders to ensure that the opportunity areas we uncovered aligned with their expectations and business goals.
With our client's go-head, the team conducted a design studio to explore potential solutions.
Pain Point
Solution
No direct access to primary features from home page
.png)
User dashboard with system’s main features front and center
Mid-Fidelity Wireframe
Home Page (Dashboard)
Counterintuitive process to update or save account contacts
Direct user flow and integrate 'other contacts' features within client account page
Client Account Page
Cannot preview documents without exporting to PDF
Integrate preview and select feature before export or print
Preview Print Selection
Turning our designs into a clickable prototype, we conducted an initial round of usability testing with 5 Allegiance users.
Ease of Use
4
Avg. Score
1 = Difficult, 5 = Easy
"I don't deal with Billing in my job, but it made sense enough that I was still able to figure it out."
Satisfaction
Avg. Score
4
Avg. Score
1 = Difficult, 5 = Easy
"Everything I need is still there and the dropdown is helpful instead of having to go back and forth between screens."
Key Insights
Though 5/5 users completed their given tasks and were pleased with our design, it wasn't without a bit of confusion and hesitation.
-
4/5 users took multiple attempts and navigated to other areas of the system when asked to locate the 'Other Contacts' dropdown
​
-
4/5 user had trouble locating the 'Add Statement to Invoice' option when asked to run a billing report
​
-
2/5 users did not connect that 'Preview' led to printing when asked to print a billing report
With these new essential insights as our priority, we were ready iterate once more and bring our design to life.
Allegiance Traffic 2.0
After an additional round of testing with 6 Allegiance users on our hi-fidelity prototype, we presented our final design and recommendations to our stakeholders.
Ease of Use
4.5
Avg. Score
1 = Difficult, 5 = Easy
"With the little interaction I've had with billing and contacts, it's still easy, clear, and pretty straight forward."
Satisfaction
Avg. Score
4.5
Avg. Score
1 = Difficult, 5 = Easy
"This is definitely more simple. When it's easy on the eyes, it helps!"
Drawing from my fluency in user research, data synthesis, iterative design, and strategy, my team and I were able to hone in on the immediate needs of our users, create an & deliver a successful viable product that led to an 80% increase in consumer satisfaction from the original product.
What's Next?
Based on usability testing, here are a few things we would like to continue working on addressing with Allegiance as they expand their user base into commercial broadcasting:
​
-
Traffic Logs
-
Quick Access Feature
-
Adjusting Non-Profit Centric Terminology
-
Ensuring Competitive Separation (Advertising)
​
Reflections & Takeaways
Having no previous knowledge in radio traffic and with many different directions for my team to focus our attention on, working on this project enabled me to fully lean on the UX process from end-to-end. In previous projects, I had always been able to put myself in the minds of the users, but this project truly challenged me to whole-heartedly embrace being in a space of ambiguity
​