Riviera Radio App
July 2025
Bringing a legacy station into a modern listening experience
Bringing a legacy station into a modern listening experience
In July, Global acquired Riviera Radio, the only English-language radio station broadcasting across Monaco and the South of France, including Nice, Cannes, Antibes, and St. Tropez. Founded in 1987, Riviera Radio has served the French Riviera for nearly four decades, broadcasting on 106.5 FM, DAB+, and online to listeners around the world.
Following the acquisition, I was tasked with designing a white-label version of Global Player that could be fully branded to Riviera Radio.
This was the first time I owned the design strategy of a full app end to end, from discovery through
to launch.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
1x Product Owner
4x Engineers
Impact
Enabled Riviera Radio’s transition into Global’s product ecosystem, unlocking scalable features, improved engagement, and operational efficiency.
Problem area
Modern listeners, outdated experience
Modern listeners, outdated experience
Riviera Radio’s existing app experience had fallen behind modern product expectations.
The experience suffered from several key issues:
Poor UX and outdated branding, with heavy reliance on embedded web views sourced directly from the website
Highly manual editorial workflows, requiring one person to spend around four hours a day managing Riviera Radio’s online presence
Fragmented listening journeys, with catch-up content hosted externally through lists of SoundCloud links
With Global’s acquisition, Riviera Radio had an opportunity to move into a modern product ecosystem. The goal was to offer listeners a seamless, native app experience while significantly reducing editorial overhead and operational complexity.
The old Riviera Radio app
Opportunity 1
Transform a fragmented, web-based experience into a seamless native listening app.
Opportunity 2
Reduce heavy manual editorial effort by introducing scalable, app-first workflows.
Design goals
Design goals
What I aimed to achieve
What I aimed to achieve
Modern listening experience
Create a seamless app experience that brings live and catch-up into one coherent journey.
Focused product structure
Designing a single-station app experience that avoids complexity and supports future growth.
Editorial Efficiency
Reduce the manual effort required to manage digital presence through simpler workflows.
Scaleable Foundation
Leverage Global Player’s platform and design system to create a product that can evolve without bespoke design or engineering work.
Modern listening experience
Create a seamless app experience that brings live and catch-up into one coherent journey.
Focused product structure
Designing a single-station app experience that avoids complexity and supports future growth.
Editorial Efficiency
Reduce the manual effort required to manage digital presence through simpler workflows.
Scaleable Foundation
Leverage Global Player’s platform and design system to create a product that can evolve without bespoke design or engineering work.
Design decision 01
Designing with intent, not assumptions
Designing with intent, not assumptions
The project began without a formal brief or predefined feature list. Instead of waiting for direction, I audited Riviera Radio’s existing digital presence to understand what listeners were actually engaging with. I defined the product offering through discovery.
This surfaced three clear value propositions: live radio listening, local daily news from the French Riviera, and sponsored lifestyle and culture podcasts.
Ultimately, these insights shaped the foundation of the app and made it clear to me that the experience needed three core tabs: Listen, News, and Podcasts.
Live Listening Engagement
Tracks how often and how long listeners engage with live radio across stations.
Accessibility Compliance
Monitors improvements across contrast, tap targets, and assistive technology support.
Editorial Efficiency
Measures time and effort required for teams to update live content without developer support.
Performance & Load Speed
Tracks screen load times and interaction responsiveness across devices.
Full Editorial Control
Measures time and effort required for teams to update live content without developer support.
Performance & Load Speed
Tracks screen load times and interaction responsiveness across devices.
Design decision 02
Use existing Global app implementations as a foundation rather than designing a bespoke solution
Use existing Global app implementations as a foundation rather than designing a bespoke solution
At the start of the project, there were two viable app configurations to build from: the LBC standalone app or the Global Player app. From an infrastructure perspective, the LBC app was the stronger foundation. It already supported news article stacks, which closely aligned with Riviera Radio’s core value proposition of local daily news alongside live radio.
However, LBC’s visual language and component styling are highly distinctive and editorially driven. To avoid Riviera Radio inheriting a brand identity that was not its own, I chose to pair LBC’s underlying structure with Global Player’s block-based UI patterns.
The Riviera Radio app resulted in a hybrid approach:
LBC’s infrastructure enabled news-first functionality
Global Player’s design system ensured visual consistency and scalability
Riviera Radio's clear, independent brand identity.
This approach reduced risk, avoided unnecessary bespoke work, and allowed Riviera Radio to launch quickly on a proven foundation while still feeling purpose-built.
Design decision 03
Scale a multi-station platform down to a single-station experience
Scale a multi-station platform down to a single-station experience
Global Player assumes multiple stations and switching behaviours that Riviera Radio simply does not need.
Rather than forcing Riviera Radio into an over-engineered structure, I designed a simplified Listen experience that removed unnecessary complexity while still benefiting from the robustness of the underlying system.
The result felt intentional and focused, not like a reduced version of something larger. I had also captured in discovery that listeners were sent out of the app to external SoundCloud links to replay shows.
By integrating catch-up directly into the app, we created a more cohesive listening journey and improved content discoverability.This also helped reduce editorial effort and removed reliance on third-party platforms for core listening behaviour.
Impact
Early signals of success
Early signals of success
The Riviera Radio app launched on December 2nd, and early engagement signals indicate strong adoption across listening and secondary features.
A slide of success metrics from Global Player's EOY in Review
Increased daily listeners
Daily unique listeners increased immediately following launch across both the Global Player app and the standalone Riviera Radio app, indicating successful discovery and cross-platform visibility.
Increased Total listening hours
Total listening hours rose steadily post-launch, suggesting listeners are returning and spending more time listening rather than sampling once.
Increased daily active users
Daily active users in the standalone Riviera Radio app increased day on day during the first week, showing healthy early retention.
High engagement of new Catch Up feature
Catch Up feature highest engagement beyond live listening, validating the design decision to bring on-demand content directly into the app.
Retrospective
What this project reinforced about designing at scale
What this project reinforced about designing at scale
White-label radio apps represent a scalable opportunity beyond multi-station platforms.
Designing a multi-language, cross-country radio app for Riviera Radio demonstrated that not every station needs the complexity of a multi-brand platform.
This project showed that Global’s systems can flex down as well as scale up, opening opportunities to support individual stations worldwide using the same foundations.
Design teams need better tooling to test new and pop-up station launches across ecosystems.
While the Riviera Radio launch was technically smooth, it highlighted friction for design around visibility and predictability, particularly when stations appear across multiple environments such as Global Player and standalone apps.
A sandbox or preview environment for new and pop-up stations would reduce reactive changes, improve confidence ahead of launch, and provide clearer visibility into how stations appear across the full product ecosystem.
Learning 01
Preserving familiarity can be more valuable than introducing novelty in high-trust experiences.
Learning 02
Design systems are most effective when paired with clear ownership and editorial workflows.
Learning 03
White-label radio apps represent a scalable opportunity beyond multi-station platforms.
Learning 04
Our team needs more efficient tooling to test new and pop-up station launches across our entire product ecosystem.
Thanks for stopping by. This portfolio site was built with a dash of chaos, and a whole lot of care. Everything here reflects how I approach design: inclusivity, intuitiveness, but make it cute.
For collabs, contact: jess.seguradesign@gmail.com.
© Jess Segura 2026. All rights reserved.
Made with Framer
Thanks for stopping by. This portfolio site was built with a dash of chaos, and a whole lot of care. Everything here reflects how I approach design: inclusivity, intuitiveness, but make it cute.
For collabs, contact: jess.seguradesign@gmail.com.
© Jess Segura 2026. All rights reserved.
Made with Framer
Thanks for stopping by. This portfolio site was built with a dash of chaos, and a whole lot of care. Everything here reflects how I approach design: inclusivity, intuitiveness, but make it cute.
For collabs, contact: jess.seguradesign@gmail.com.
© Jess Segura 2026. All rights reserved.
Made with Framer
Riviera Radio App
July 2025
Bringing a legacy station into a modern listening experience
In July, Global acquired Riviera Radio, the only English-language radio station broadcasting across Monaco and the South of France, including Nice, Cannes, Antibes, and St. Tropez. Founded in 1987, Riviera Radio has served the French Riviera for nearly four decades, broadcasting on 106.5 FM, DAB+, and online to listeners around the world.
Following the acquisition, I was tasked with designing a white-label version of Global Player that could be fully branded to Riviera Radio.
This was the first time I owned the design strategy of a full app end to end, from discovery through
to launch.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
1x Product Owner
4x Engineers
Impact
Enabled Riviera Radio’s transition into Global’s product ecosystem, unlocking scalable features, improved engagement, and operational efficiency.
Problem area
Modern listeners, outdated experience
Riviera Radio’s existing app experience had fallen behind modern product expectations.
The experience suffered from several key issues:
Poor UX and outdated branding, with heavy reliance on embedded web views sourced directly from the website
Highly manual editorial workflows, requiring one person to spend around four hours a day managing Riviera Radio’s online presence
Fragmented listening journeys, with catch-up content hosted externally through lists of SoundCloud links
With Global’s acquisition, Riviera Radio had an opportunity to move into a modern product ecosystem. The goal was to offer listeners a seamless, native app experience while significantly reducing editorial overhead and operational complexity.
The old Riviera Radio app
Opportunity 1
Transform a fragmented, web-based experience into a seamless native listening app.
Opportunity 2
Reduce heavy manual editorial effort by introducing scalable, app-first workflows.
Design goals
What I aimed to achieve
Modern listening experience
Create a seamless app experience that brings live and catch-up into one coherent journey.
Focused product structure
Designing a single-station app experience that avoids complexity and supports future growth.
Editorial Efficiency
Reduce the manual effort required to manage digital presence through simpler workflows.
Scaleable Foundation
Leverage Global Player’s platform and design system to create a product that can evolve with minimal intervention.
Design decision 01
Designing with intent, not assumptions
The project began without a formal brief or predefined feature list. Instead of waiting for direction, I audited Riviera Radio’s existing digital presence to understand what listeners were actually engaging with. I defined the product offering through discovery.
This surfaced three clear value propositions: live radio listening, local daily news from the French Riviera, and sponsored lifestyle and culture podcasts.
Ultimately, these insights shaped the foundation of the app and made it clear to me that the experience needed three core tabs: Listen, News, and Podcasts.
Live Listening Engagement
Tracks how often and how long listeners engage with live radio across stations.
Accessibility Compliance
Monitors improvements across contrast, tap targets, and assistive technology support.
Editorial Efficiency
Measures time and effort required for teams to update live content without developer support.
Performance & Load Speed
Tracks screen load times and interaction responsiveness across devices.
Editorial Efficiency
Measures time and effort required for teams to update live content without developer support.
Performance & Load Speed
Tracks screen load times and interaction responsiveness across devices.
Design decision 02
Use existing Global app implementations as a foundation rather than designing a bespoke solution
At the start of the project, there were two viable app configurations to build from: the LBC standalone app or the Global Player app. From an infrastructure perspective, the LBC app was the stronger foundation. It already supported news article stacks, which closely aligned with Riviera Radio’s core value proposition of local daily news alongside live radio.
However, LBC’s visual language and component styling are highly distinctive and editorially driven. To avoid Riviera Radio inheriting a brand identity that was not its own, I chose to pair LBC’s underlying structure with Global Player’s block-based UI patterns.
The Riviera Radio app resulted in a hybrid approach:
LBC’s infrastructure enabled news-first functionality
Global Player’s design system ensured visual consistency and scalability
Riviera Radio's clear, independent brand identity.
This approach reduced risk, avoided unnecessary bespoke work, and allowed Riviera Radio to launch quickly on a proven foundation while still feeling purpose-built.
Design decision 03
Scale a multi-station platform down to a single-station experience
Global Player assumes multiple stations and switching behaviours that Riviera Radio simply does not need.
Rather than forcing Riviera Radio into an over-engineered structure, I designed a simplified Listen experience that removed unnecessary complexity while still benefiting from the robustness of the underlying system.
The result felt intentional and focused, not like a reduced version of something larger. I had also captured in discovery that listeners were sent out of the app to external SoundCloud links to replay shows.
By integrating catch-up directly into the app, we created a more cohesive listening journey and improved content discoverability.This also helped reduce editorial effort and removed reliance on third-party platforms for core listening behaviour.
Impact
Early signals of success
The Riviera Radio app launched on December 2nd, and early engagement signals indicate strong adoption across listening and secondary features.
A slide of success metrics from Global Player's EOY in Review
Increased daily listeners
Daily unique listeners increased immediately following launch across both the Global Player app and the standalone Riviera Radio app, indicating successful discovery and cross-platform visibility.
Increased Total listening hours
Total listening hours rose steadily post-launch, suggesting listeners are returning and spending more time listening rather than sampling once.
Increased daily active users
Daily active users in the standalone Riviera Radio app increased day on day during the first week, showing healthy early retention.
High engagement of new Catch Up feature
Catch Up feature highest engagement beyond live listening, validating the design decision to bring on-demand content directly into the app.
Retrospective
What this project reinforced about designing at scale
White-label radio apps represent a scalable opportunity beyond multi-station platforms.
Designing a multi-language, cross-country radio app for Riviera Radio demonstrated that not every station needs the complexity of a multi-brand platform.
This project showed that Global’s systems can flex down as well as scale up, opening opportunities to support individual stations worldwide using the same foundations.
Design teams need better tooling to test new and pop-up station launches across ecosystems.
While the Riviera Radio launch was technically smooth, it highlighted friction for design around visibility and predictability, particularly when stations appear across multiple environments such as Global Player and standalone apps.
A sandbox or preview environment for new and pop-up stations would reduce reactive changes, improve confidence ahead of launch, and provide clearer visibility into how stations appear across the full product ecosystem.
Learning 01
Preserving familiarity can be more valuable than introducing novelty in high-trust experiences.
Learning 02
Design systems are most effective when paired with clear ownership and editorial workflows.
Learning 03
White-label radio apps represent a scalable opportunity beyond multi-station platforms.
Learning 04
Our team needs more efficient tooling to test new and pop-up station launches across our entire product ecosystem.