Spectrum TV Stream
iOS, Android
Sketch, Principle for Mac
Summer 2022
UX, Prototyping, Experimentation Concept
Working for a cable company often highlighted how strong business deliverables can drive design decisions. It also helped forge me into a designer who is keen on understanding the business side, striving to curate design options that satisfy both customer and profitability. I had been working on a PIP (Picture-in-Picture) project, and getting increased video streaming time per app use was the primary goal. While balancing stakeholder opinions, business deliverables, engineering constraints, and the end user experience, I had an idea.
Spectrum TV Stream is a linear (live TV) app first and foremost. The Video player is the most important feature - but the Guide is closely tied to it. Spectrum had deeply entrenched technical issues preventing the two to be fully merged, thus creating a split experience with a "Mini Guide" tied to Live TV, and a full Guide on a separate page.
We knew that 10-ft experiences far outpace mobile for video consumption. We also knew that the Mini Guide left a lot to be desired with functionality, not allowing customers to set DVR recordings, manage recordings, view information about what's being aired, see into the future, or set favorite networks - yikes! By burying the Live TV stream in a nav tab, we were essentially forcing people to leave it behind if they wanted to do any of those actions. Something is wrong with this picture.
Let's take a step back, and consider how people consume media on mobile devices. From music to audio books, short form video to movies and series, we were the only ones to smash the stream into a page. I intentionally ignored other cable companies, because they seem to all be losing their market share. Still, we can learn from the rest of the industry.
YouTube is a giant. The Google-owned streaming service takes 10% of total viewing for streaming services - eclipsing the competition. Not only that, a remarkable 40-60% of their streams are viewed on mobile devices. This product will set mobile streaming paradigms by their UX decisions alone, and to say they are doing something right is an understatement. While they aren't a direct competitor to the linear-based cable companies (and YouTubeTV is a thing) ... I believe it's relevant to take notes on the titan of video.
When you select a video to watch, it takes over everything. It does allow for some minute navigation ... next / previous videos, related videos, or jumping to the channel - but it significantly limits the functionality of the app beyond those.
Next up on the list of streaming services that are sweeping the floor with cable, good ol' Netflix. Blockbuster wasn't the only casualty in evolution. A close second to YT with 8% market share for total streaming, it's another one that can't be ignored.
Netflix takes a more draconian approach to multitasking compared to YT. They will let you switch episodes when watching a series, and they'll let you exit the app and keep the video streaming, but they aren't interested in allowing you to view the rest of the app if you started a stream.
Like it or not, basically anything Jeff Bezos touched has launched to success. If you look at market share and growth, Prime Video is no exception. This is an interesting service because of their ability to blend TVOD and subscription-based content so well. Let's dig into how they handle video streaming.
I suspect it might cause frustration when a user is on a product page, accidentally (or on purpose) taps something in the Nav Bar, and when they return their product page is gone. It's possible to build up a hefty back stack in the sub-nav - I hope I don't lose my place!
Hulu is one of the OG's in the streaming world. Started in 2008 ... just a year after the launch of our first smartphone, the iPhone. They've kept their status as a major player, and continue to dominate as a streaming service provider.
Hulu blocks the Nav Bar for both Product Pages and the Player. This makes it more obvious to a user that if they navigate away, they must minimize (for the player only) or exit the content first.
We've looked at streaming apps that are more successful than cable, and observed one or two patterns which are very different from how the old-school media players do things. Older generations might be happy with their set top box units, proficient with the nuances, and adverse to change. That doesn't need to limit how we handle the mobile apps - they don't need to be functional clones of the on-screen cable guide that's been around for a half-century.
All these apps do more than only play video ... the list goes on for why a person would use a video service. Let's think about hierarchy. Probably most people aren't opening their iPhone to have background noise for their pet while they leave the house.
Consumption of content is the bread and butter for all media streaming apps. Period. It's why people pay for them, it's how the companies get paid. The more streaming, the better.
It's a prerequisite for watching something. With the exception of watching the currently tuned / startup channel on app launch, they are going to need to find something appealing to them.
About to get on a flight? Probably want to download some content to the device to watch later. Is there a game on while you are at work? Definitely want to set a recording to watch later instead of hearing about it from friends.
Spectrum TV had an innovation week, and I was excited to jump in and show a new idea - free from the typical mire that projects went through. Here's how I took the observations from above, and put a little spin on it.
I love doing full re-designs, but there's a huge opportunity to enhance the experience if you can work with what you have. Recycling existing components is easier to budget for and less risky to put forth as experiments.
Here's a concept where we can continue to open the app with the Live TV Stream playing at app launch, allow for navigating the app without cutting it off, all by reshuffling components we already have built.
Not long after creating this concept, the business deliverables started to soften. A new initiative to make a modern looking "Home" was kicked off, and a willingness to experiment with the nature of the video player took shape. Instead of landing on Live TV, we could show a landing page with an embedded player in it - still streaming content, but separated from the standard Live TV experience we were used to.
While we were free to create a new experience for the landing page, there was a very long-standing wish from designers, product owners, developers, and VP's alike to "just put the video player of the guide". That had been the wish for so long - based on a knowledge that it was silly we had to split the Live-only guide with the full Guide - other ideas were met with skepticism.
Pinning the TV Stream above the guide would have been an improvement over the current implementation, I value the communal expertise of my colleagues who had worked in the industry much longer than I. What a perfect opportunity to set aside opinions and get some data with an A/B Experiment!
The purpose of this A/B experiment would be to learn if users want to browse the Guide with a primary focus on the Video Stream. Is the long-standing "just combine live and guide" a user based design? Does taking the whole screen with the portrait player - forcing the user to consciously minimize the Stream - help them complete other tasks without abandoning the app completely?
I left Spectrum right around the time I was starting to share these ideas, and I'm afraid the experiment it might have fizzled out after I moved on. Any media streaming company could benefit from taking a look at their player, how it fits into (or over) the app in general, and experiment around it. I would be curious to see how this line of thinking could help Cable be more competitive.
