Overview

Freeview Australia were seeking to modernise their Hybrid Broadband TV service for Smart TVs to meet evolving viewer needs and expectations. Part of the challenge and solution was to create an “Always on” mini TV guide along with a brand refresh. Freeview Australia also wanted to continue upgrading their service with a second phase looking at an upgrade to the search and discovery of Australian TV content.

Goal

Two long term goals:
– Review, redesign, validate and enhance their TV experience
– Expand and enhance their Android and iOS mobile and tablet apps.

Role

Senior Product Designer
User Research, Prototyping, User Flows, UI Design, Developer Handoff

Tools

Figma, Lookback, JIRA

Team

2 Researchers
1 Designer
1 Solutions Architect
3+ Engineers
1 BA and numerous Stakeholders

Timeline

16 weeks
(two 8 week phases)

Phase 1: TV

Phase 2: Apps

Reflection

1

Phase 1: TV

A new Onboarding flow for the TV experience. This is a little glimpse on the Onboarding improvements I worked on.

Discovery: Understanding the TV browsing and watching habits of everyday Australians.

Freeview Australia were seeking to upgrade their Hybrid Broadband TV service for Smart TVs with an “Always on” mini TV guide along with a brand refresh. This initial phase consisted of a discovery and research, followed by design and stake holder approvals. Development was handed over to another party with documentation and hand-off notes.

A full TV experience redesign backed by user research

I worked closely with the Freeview BA and my design manager as gathered we co-lead the research on behalf of Freeview. A questionnaire survey followed by qualitative research which consisted of comparative usability testing on initial wireframe prototypes. This data guided the decisions of the new experience which I designed flows and high fidelity designs. Along each step of the way I had to present insights, reports, progress and designs to the Product Working Group, a set of stakeholders representing ABC, SBS, 7 Network, 9 Network and 10 Network.

Challenges continuing through COVID

This first phase of the project resided in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The challenges of work-from-home combined with qualitative user-research with interviews meant I had to learn new skills to conduct research remotely and online. There were many tech hurdles to overcome, but I was able to guide and assist multiple test participants that were 60+ years old to connect to video call interviews.

Designs, Approvals, Builds and Launch

The data driven approach gave us the insights to produce high fidelity designs and flows. This was all approved by the Product Working Group. The next part of the project was to handover to the engineering team to build the app.

I was brought back in to assess the design quality of the builds and give the “go ahead” from a UX perspective. This phase of the product launched in April 2021.

2

Phase 2: Apps

Understanding the TV browsing habits of everyday Australians and their use of mobile companion apps.

Overview

Freeview Australia sought to continue upgrading their service with the enhancement to search and discovery of Australian TV content. This overall lead to the prioritising of the new mobile companion app along with a brand refresh. This project took insights and learning from the earlier phases of the project while completing a new discovery and research phase, followed by high-fidelity designs and collaboration with the engineering team.

User research lead redesign of a new ‘search and discovery’ experience

I lead the research and discovery phase with a small design team for the research stage for “search and discovery” of TV and movie content. Similar to the first phase of the Freeview project, a questionnaire survey followed by qualitative research on initial wireframes shaped the recommendations and steps taken to redesign the new experience. Collaboration with the Solutions Architect ensured technical requirments and concerns were addressed in early prototypes. Freeview’s decisions lead to prioritising the mobile app redesign over the TV experience, the rest of the project was then focused on the new mobile app. I lead the high fidelity Android and iOS mobile and tablet designs with a junior designer assisting throughout the rest of the design phase of the project. This allowed for some great opportunities for mentoring and knowledge sharing.

Notable Challenges

This project had a very comfortable well structured discovery and research phase which produced some high-level wireframes, clear insights and recommendations identifying pain-points and frustrations to address. However

Managing the multi-party Product Working Group stakeholders proved challenging but also insightful. It resulted in facilitating a broad unanimous group decisions and separate 1 on 1 discussions to resolve concerns.

The high fidelity design along with development and quality assurance saw some unexpected tech hurdles and dependencies that put time pressure on the both the design and development side of the project. I was able to trim out some of the fat and reuse generic components to between Android and iOS platforms to be able to deliver the project on time.

3

Reflection

This project was a great one as we delivered two phases and were able to return to features initially explored and then build upon them.

The challenges of COVID lockdowns and remote working was an initially hurdle but managed to flourish with the use of online collaboration tools. Other challenges involved appeasing and aligning a 6 party working group which all parties needed to align and agree unanimously.

The research sections of this project were my highlights, being able to dive deep with users and really understand their pain points and their usage habits. While we explored many of these, unfortunately we were not able to address some of the larger pain points due to the equal and fair structure that Freeview holds among the TV networks.

My final reflection is not all case studies end in glory. External factors on this project limited the potential that could have been for the mobile apps. The app store reviews stayed low, users satisfaction unchanged, comments and reviews saying ‘the previous app was better’ make me want to strive to do better in future.