SlingTV
Director and Head of Product Design
Led SlingTV's end-to-end redesign across TV, web and mobile platforms.
REIMAGINING SLING TV
Finding the solution starts with understanding the user problem.
THE USER PROBLEM
In the old Sling TV user experience, core tasks could not be completed easily or efficiently due to a complex interaction paradigm that was not user centric.
Content discovery was also difficult with outdated recommendations and limited personalization. Additionally the UI was old and dated.
THE OBJECTIVE
OKR: "Delight our customers by delivering a redesigned Sling app experience."
Deliver a "best in class" MVP product, across TV, desktop, mobile and tablet clients, that will drive viewer engagement and retention.
Due to the digital streaming growth and competitive landscape, the objective was to launch on our first client, Amazon Fire TV, within a year.
THE CHALLENGES
The timeline to complete the project was extremely aggressive, 6 months to complete all designs across all platforms, and 1 year to launch to the primary client.
Additionally, the development teams were also building a new React Native tech stack, as well as platform specific development for Roku and TVOS clients.
New team, fully remote.
MY ROLE
Fulfilled a critical role driving and delivering the redesigned, end-to-end user experience for Sling TV across all platforms (mobile, tablet and CTV devices); leading both the content discovery and in-app growth experiences. Product design leaders wear many hats, from IA, UX, UI, DS, research and customer beta programs - I oversaw every aspect of the design and delivery process. This also included stakeholder management across executive leadership, product, development, marketing, CX, and communications.
IA & UX
Remotely lead six cross functional teams, Home, Guide, DVR, On Demand, Search, and IAP/acquisition, to redesign the Sling application suite from the ground up.
This effort was cross platform - TV, web, mobile and tablet - and delivered in 6 months.
UI, DSM & ACCESSIBILITY
Lead the UI design, motion graphics and art direction and worked closely with brand marketing and other key stakeholders to align on our product direction.
Additionally, I oversaw the marketing initiative for in-app messaging and our acquisition strategy. I also established a DSM team to create a single source of truth for our new UI.
RESEARCH
Establish a research center of excellence to support and optimize our customer research efforts and best practices. This included weekly testing, alpha and beta feedback during the delivery phase.
This entailed daily user scrubs spanning multiple clients at incremental stages of development.
DELIVERY
Lead the design teams and supported junior PMs throughout the delivery and launch process. This included development handoff, change control and DSM governance processes. As well as JIRA tracking, and overall design QA.
I also worked closely with our Marketing, and PR teams regarding customer messaging, and our CX teams.
RESEARCH
60+ studies, 4 market segments, 4 form factors, 6 months - remote.
Heuristics evaluation, user analytics, competitive analysis, personas, moderated/unmoderated, qualitative/quantitative studies
IA & INTERACTION
The design process began information architecture prototyping, which we tested weekly across target user segments.
The same process was applied to our new interaction paradigm.
VISUAL DESIGN
The visual language discovery started with our brand palette from which we explored different primary, secondary and tertiary color options.
MOTION GRAPHICS
Motion graphics studies were conducted across our TV, desktop and mobile platforms.
The icing on the design cake...
PRESS STATE
KEY OUTCOMES AND LEARNINGS
KPIS
Key Metrics - Up
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Improved session stability
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Improved streaming performance index (SPI)
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Reduced day 1 cancels
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Days viewed in the last 7 days
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Video starts from Home (first 3 ribbons)
KPIS
Key Metrics - Down
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Tech contacts per 100k users
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IAP conversion
LEARNINGS
Key Findings
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Laddering up to OKRs is fundamental to the overall UX strategy
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Qualitative data is powerful - 2% (quantitatively) of users can be very vocal (BWW, Guide)
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Testing 10ft virtual testing is not as reliable - form factor matters (albeit font, number of channels in a single guide view, real usage and user interaction is the ideal validation
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As per design process, constantly iterating across every platform is complex and resource heavy (balancing delivery and design simultaneously) - this includes managing feedback as well as post MVP backlog.
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Process is really, really important. When you are driving really fast, you have to find time to slow down and re-evaluate - this applies to agile development best practices, acceptance criteria through to test automation.
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There’s nothing more important than the team - and this spans everyone from, developers, designers, product managers, program managers, ops, marketing, brand, legal, customer experience, ELT - building consensus and collaboration is so, so important. The design process cannot be confined to designers - everyone has to buy-in.
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Empowerment can be highly impactful when it comes to solving user issues - more depth, more tactical design, deeper discovery. As per life, nothing is ever perfect, but we iterate our way to success.
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MVP is just the start point. Communicating that to millions of users, some of which are intolerant of change, is not easy but sometimes done is better than perfect.