Hot97
Hot 97 is one of the most influential hip-hop and R&B radio brands in the world. The website is central to how the brand stays connected with its audience between broadcasts, delivering news, promoting talent, and driving live listening. The project was a full redesign focused on making that content easier to get to.
ROLE
PROBLEM
The site had been designed with visual impact as the priority, and usability had suffered for it. Layouts were dense and hard to scan, finding content took too many clicks, and the mobile experience was poor. Users were leaving before they had a chance to engage.
RESULTS
Users could find and consume content faster across desktop and mobile.
Visual noise reduced without flattening the brand's energy.
Content discovery improved across news, talent, and live listening.
A more scalable layout system for ongoing editorial and promotional content.
The Challenge
The brand is bold and fast-moving, but that energy had turned into noise on the website. Layouts were dense, navigation buried the content people actually came for, and the mobile experience had clearly been treated as secondary. Users were arriving and leaving without engaging, not because the content wasn't there, but because the interface was getting in the way.
The brief wasn't to make it minimal or safe. The site still needed to feel like Hot 97. The challenge was channelling that energy rather than just letting it sprawl.
My Role & Approach
I started with a UX audit to understand where and why users were dropping off, then mapped the main journeys, news, talent, live listening, and restructured the navigation and layouts around them.
A lot of the visual work was about hierarchy rather than style. The brand already had a strong identity; the problem was that everything competed for attention at the same level. I simplified the layout system to create a clear reading order without stripping out the personality.
Mobile got a proper rebuild rather than a patch. A big part of the audience was on mobile and the experience had never been designed with that in mind. I also made sure the layout system was flexible enough to handle the constant flow of editorial and promotional content the team was publishing, so it didn't break every time something new went live.
Outcome
The redesign gave Hot 97 a site that could actually keep pace with the brand. Content was easier to find, the mobile experience worked properly, and the team had a cleaner system to publish into going forward.