Challenge
This was a concepting, "pitch" project to re-envision the AT&T media portal, currently att.net.
The mission of this new portal is to seamlessly connect editorial content customers enjoy online with their digital entertainment, resulting in a highly-personalized "videotorial" experience that leads to new and exciting discoveries.
Role & Team
I played both UX and UI roles, participating in design ideation sessions and sketches, presentations, creating wireframes, and visual design of persona cards and the watch tablet screens. I worked in a team of 2 other designers, who also contributed to ideation, sketching, and design of visual assets.
Approach
One of the first questions we asked was, who are we designing this new ecosystem for, and what can we do for each of them? We brought different members of the team together into a design studio where we brainstormed who our key users were, what their journeys were from acquisition of DIRECTV through to registration for this portal, and how we might elevate their experience.
We created flows that help tell the whole story that the customer goes through, from acquisition through to onboarding and registration.
We wrote stories to capture what this platform brings to the table that's valuable to our customers.
From our design studios, we generated feature ideas and new concepts that would build upon the overall mission of the platform, and enhance the experience and interface. In addition to the design studios, we had design slam sessions where we sat down, armed with paper and markers (and crayons), and drew out ideas. A lot of neat ideas came out of this that supported our basic concept of a "video-editorial" platform, but played out more localized at the interface level.
Connecting with personas & customer journey
When we identify the pain points of the customer / persona, we can then ask "how might we", as a product and business, provide solutions?
Customer journey diagram
A DETOUR
We made the mistake of trying to create the personas without any research at first. We pulled together a diverse group from our team - not just designers but also strategists, writers, and pms - into the design studio to craft our personas. But when I reviewed the notes later I realized that the further away from our own demographic the persona was, the more vague and hollow the notes were. None of us had any idea how, for instance, a 45-year-old consumes their news (Facebook? Magazines? Old-fashioned newspaper?) and we were just making assumptions based on small samples (our dad or uncle). Were these assumptions correct? We needed research. So I worked closely with our researcher and we crafted surveys that would help us best understand people's habits and frustrations when it comes to media consumption.
Persona Cards
Output & Learnings
In addition to the documents above, the team mocked up higher-fidelity comps illustrating certain concepts. One such concept is that of on-boarding: the experience of capturing user's interest and preferences right after registering for DIRECTV but before engaging with the platform. It is a crucial part of the experience because it drives personalization.
One thing this project taught me was how important it is to conduct research in order not just to validate design assumptions, but to ground design assumptions in the first place.
Onboarding Experience
The "watch" experience re-envisioned
The 'watch' experience re-envisioned
End-card, part of the 'watch' experience re-envisioned