THE PROJECT
The world of media has always been my favourite topic – especially television. After all, most of my university studies and work have been around that box in the corner of the living room.
These days, the way we understand television is changing though. It’s no longer just the thing in front of our couch, it’s with us everywhere – in our pockets, on tablets, computers, even on our wrists. However, the way we can access all the content on our TVs is very different from the way it can be found on other devices.
MEET PLAYER
Just think about it. On your TV, if you have Sky in the UK, or for example Vodafone TV in the Czech Republic, you can just say “find The Crown” to the remote control, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s a series on Netflix or a documentary on the Discovery Channel – you can instantly watch it. You don’t have to quickly go through your head to realize the Simpsons aren’t on Netflix, but on Disney Plus to find that episode your colleague told you about yesterday.
But on our smart devices, things aren’t that simple. Now I do understand that it’s not that the TV providers would be lazy to integrate those services in the apps, I know that the world of programme rights is much more complex, but one day, after looking for a series through several apps, I thought… there has to be a better way!
SO, WHAT IS PLAYER?
Now back to the world of product design. The aim of PLAYER is very simple – create an app that is a center for all your TV/streaming services. Basically to allow users to only ever need one TV app on their tablets and smartphones.
Now if you think about it, you’ll quickly realize there are two types of those apps. First, there are PAYTV OTT apps – such as Sky+/SkyQ, Horizon TV/UPC TV/Virgin Media Go, DirecTV Now, or T-Mobile/Magenta TV. Secondly, there are apps for streaming services, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, or Voyo. So, the crucial question is – should the solution be built around OTT apps or around “streaming” apps?
At this stage, usually, I’d go and ask several people about how they use their apps and what they like to do with them – but this was just a fun challenge for a weekend, so instead I went through all the apps I was able to find and did some research online, and in the end, decided to build this solution around a new OTT app – it turns out that linear TV viewing is still a dominant way of consuming television.
THE PRODUCT
After researching all the apps, I created a new app that combines the best out of them and creates “the one app you need for all things television”.
Built around Live TV
As I’ve mentioned, the core of the solution is still the live TV broadcasting. The aim of the design is to make it as easy as possible for the user to find the channels they want to watch.
All-in-one solution
I’ve mentioned this one above, but it’s a big feature – all of your content – all your services are in one place. Need to look for something? Just hit the Search button and find it. And no worries – if you have access to that content, you’ll find it there.
Download to go, watch anything anytime
The aim of TV on a portable device is to watch the content whenever and wherever we want – that’s why in Player, the viewer can watch not only any on demand content, but also their recordings, and anything they want can be also stored in the Downloads folder – to be viewed offline as well as online, of course. And to record a show should be just a matter of tapping a button (please, please, no “wait while we connect to your box” message).
Profiles + watch anonymously
These days, our privacy matters. The prospect of having content tailored to my viewing habits is great (and the app supports it by default), but sometimes you don’t want to know the app what you’re watching – and that should be fine. So, why not support an Anonymous mode, where no data can be linked to you?
Unified experience
People don’t like changes – why should you get used to a system on your TV that is completely different from what you get on your portable device? Player is designed to work similarly across all devices. Of course, it has to respect some platform rules, but the overall feel should be the same everywhere. Easy.
NEXT STEPS?
As I’ve mentioned, this was just a fun weekend project, and the final solution has several issues:
- First up: testing – the whole thing is just a first sketch, and the next step (if it was a real project) is definitely testing it with potential users
- Next: UI – the UI design is heavily inspired by apps I researched (and used myself) – including UPC TV (Horizon Go/Virgin TV Go), Sky apps, Zattoo, AT&T TV Now, Hulu, and countless others)
- And accessibility. The current UI has several accessibility issues – and that’s absolutely something that would need to be addressed before any further steps.
