Building trust with consistent UX patterns

The product

Nationwide TV app
Millions of users daily
Millions of assets across live TV, on demand, transactional, etc.
Many ways to watch them

The problem

We weren't speaking the same language across platforms. Important context displayed ineffectively and inconsistently.

For example, when we compared button labels across platforms, Watch was sometimes Watch Now, Record was sometimes DVR, Edit was sometimes Manage, Options were sometimes called Preferences. This led to uncertainty, and customers were hesitant to use other platforms.

We needed a consistent way to communicate the right details about an asset at the right time and place, helping a customer quickly make a decision.

The goal

We wanted to design a seamless entertainment experience so customers could pick up where they left off, anywhere and on any device

Identify and standardize the common templates across platforms where logic needs to be displayed
Identify consistent locations on templates for attributes that can help customer know asset type and available actions at a glance
Standardize functions and labels across platforms

Defining the problem

Content inventory

We conducted a thorough audit of each platform gave us a baseline to compare any existing logic patterns and their labels.
Uncovered discrepancies in terminology, logic and UI patterns across platforms.

Hypothesis

We suspected the discrepancies in terminology, iconography and patterns could be contributing to low engagement.

Approach

Define unified terminology, iconography and patterns to improve cross-platform engagement.
Displaying the most important info in consistent locations will help customers get to content faster.

What we were working with

Multiple templates with dynamic logic

8+ platforms / devices, at home and on the go: Samsung TV, Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, online, cable box, iOS and Android

Stream types: on demand, live, live future, rental, purchase, pay-per-view, third party app content

Asset states: available or unavailable in the following states and combos watched, recorded, blocked by parental controls, partially watched, blocked by purchase controls, in rental window, expired

Customer states: subscription tier, location, network connection

Platform constraints: required separate pattern to achieve same actions

Licensing constraints: every platform has separate licensing agreements. Inconsistent limitations protocols for streaming content out of home and out of market

Defining a universal hierarchy

Surfacing the most important info and aligning each template to also include important info in consistent locations.

Designing global taxonomies and metadata

Speaking the same language

Impact and scalability

We helped improve the TV-watching experience for millions of people. We created cross-platform UI components, labels and patterns the customer could rely on when interacting with content.

We organized similar components in similar locations from screen to screen across platforms. With the right info in the right places:

Customers were more comfortable using the app on multiple devices
We gained a deep understanding of our catalogs, services and capabilities
Design and dev time decreased with reliable templates specific to each platform