Behind the scenes: The launch of the Times Radio - Questers

Behind the scenes: The launch of the Times Radio

Insightful talk with Altimir Antonov, iOS Engineer at News UK team

Announced in the end of January, the Times Radio has come to life on the 2nd of June 2020. Along the teams in the UK and US, News UK’s team at Questers was heavily involved in its development. To learn more about the project and how the Bulgarian team contributed to its success, we talked to Altimir Antonov, an iOS Engineer in the Wireless unit. Read what he shared:

Your team has actively contributed to making the Times Radio a reality. Can you share some details about the specific projects you’ve been involved in?

Our team developed the mobile applications for Times Radio. We worked together with the engineers from Audio Platform and the best UI/UX team to make this release a reality.

What was your personal input?

I was involved in most of the aspects of the application, including schedule and full-screen player. Some of the features I have worked on will be released in the coming weeks. I also helped with changing the way of writing tests, such as unit tests for the iOS application and contracts for the API we are using, so we can make sure we are releasing a crashless application.

What was the most challenging part about working on the Times Radio project?

We wanted to maintain 2 applications at the same time, so we had to reuse some components of our first project - TalkSport Radio. We decided to use 1 codebase for both applications. This is how the Wireless Mobile Platform was born. It contains different reusable, capsulated modules, each of them fully tested and customizable. This was probably the most challenging part. We decided to separate the team in 2 different squads and focus on different features, that should work properly on both mobile applications.

What aspects of your work are you mostly proud of?

I am mostly proud of the fact that we managed to deliver it in time, despite the difficulties around the COVID-19-realted lockdown and the separation of the team. I am sure we made the best decisions in the past few months, that will benefit us in the future.

Any other exciting projects you’re currently working on?

Of course, we are working on other projects. We are developing the TalkSport Radio application in parallel. We are always working on new things, some of them you will see in the next few weeks, some of them - later this year.


For a different view on the project, check out our insightful interview with Eli Ezeugoh - Head of Engineering of the Wireless division at News UK, who gives a high-level technical overview of the project.

Also, learn more about our relationship with News UK and the culture in their team at Questers here.

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