ABC iview Smart TV

Role

Product Designer

Year

2019 – Present

Product Team

Stuart Flanagan Lead Engineer Ailia Rizvi Engineer Marc Howard Engineer Ash Srinivasan Quality Assurance Alamelu Annamalai Quality Assurance Phil Banks User Research & Strategy Josh Akmens Product Manager 

Overview

Daily streams

1m

Weekly active users

1.2m

A digital future for ABC TV

In 2019, the tipping point between traditional broadcast TV and video on demand was approaching. ABC iview required a new modern platform to showcase its content across the SmartTV market in Australia.

This project kicked off in July 2019. A first release was shipped 12 months later, in 2020. Since 2019, I have been responsible for the design direction across the Smart TV App. We are currently in a consistent iterative design and development cycle.

This work is also currently being used to inform an Android TV App rebuild.

What we did

User research

Vision and strategy

Concept design and prototype creation

Prototype testing

Development prioritisation

Design and development of first release

Iterative design and development releases

What I learnt

Designing in context

Observing how people spend time watching TV, still is a fundamental part of this project for me. I learned that design is as much about observing life as it is about developing concepts and work.

Do more with less

Comparatively to modern tech, smart TVs severely lack processing power. The design challenge this creates is interesting: how do we create a premium experience with half the power? So far, the best answer I've found is to approach the work like an acoustic rendition of a song.