Widget Radio
You’re listening to WCUP Ninety Four dot One ‘The Park’ FM…
Sketch, the Mac vector app used by over a million people, recently invited me to adjudicate their most recent #SketchDesignChallenge. But not wanting to miss out on the fun (even though I can't win because I am a judge... whatever...), I still booted up the app and created a widget of my own: Widget Radio.
iOS Widgets 101
With the announcement of iOS 17, Apple is once again granting widgets interactivity. For a few releases before iOS 14, Apple had widgets as part of the Notification Centre, and those had some limited interactivity. But from iOS 14-16, when widgets were redesigned and placed on the Home Screen, Notification Centre widgets were deprecated, and interactivity disappeared.
But with iOS 17, Apple is returning interactivity to widgets, a feature that will improve users' quality of life. Now simple operations, playing or pausing a podcast, skipping a track, or marking off a task, won't require blowing up the entire application. I'm frustrated it took so long to reincorporate this functionality into widgets, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth; I'm glad it's back.
Widget Radio
The iPod Radio Remote enabled iPods to receive FM stations. The remote was introduced in 2006 and retailed for $49. In addition to enabling radio, the clippable remote featured playback and volume controls.
Widget Radio harkens back to the days of the original music streaming service: AM/FM radio. The Apple connection is that starting in 2006, Apple started selling a miniaturized remote that doubled as an FM tuner. The radio was later integrated into subsequent versions of the iPod but still required connected headphones since they doubled as the antenna to fetch the various FM stations. And I still remember rumours swirling during the early days of the iPhone about whether Apple would also bring radio to the iPhone.
The widget borrows influence from Apple’s original iPod Radio from the mid 2000s.
I wanted to give Widget Radio the design of an old retro radio but with a few skeuomorphic Apple embellishments. For example, The greenish tint of the tuner window borrows the design from the original Apple radio app, while the polished metal buttons for volume and tuning harken back to the OS X Lion & iPhoneOS era of design. Similarly, the wood casing, shading, depth speaker design, and colour palette borrow inspiration from Apple's cathode ray icon for the YouTube icon on early iPhones.
Bold material choices, like wood boarders, leather, reflective glass, and brushed metal add to the skeuomorphic character of Widget Radio.
The result is a retro, skeuomorphic widget I would proudly display on my iOS Home Screen. The entire design was fashioned in Sketch and was a blast to create. And even though I couldn't participate in the challenge, it helped me hone and practice my design skills for the future, so I'd highly recommend giving future challenges a shot - you become a better designer, and you might win awesome things; win-win!
📻 PS: if anyone out there wants to work with me and use some of these assets to create an actual radio streaming widget, I’d be game.
