Hulu TV + Live

While working at HUGE I was part of an embedded team at Hulu tasked with redesigning their disparate platform experiences to create a unified but flexible new ecosystem. As a Product Designer it was my job to work with Hulu's designers and product managers to develop an interaction model that worked across TV, tablet and mobile devices. 

A new interaction model

Insight: Cords are being cut

During 2016 the cord cutting movement was in full effect and a reported 5.5MM people moved to streaming only solutions. Brands like Netflix and Hulu were investing heavily in owned content and cable providers were scrambling to consolidate their online offerings.

Objective: Living room first

With a strong focus on streaming devices we wanted to deliver a strong living room experience. Because of the limited, sometimes cumbersome remote control it was important to start there and then move to the more flexible touch screen of mobile and tablet devices.

Many years, many journeys

At the time Hulu had been around for many years and was a Frankenstein of many ideas from many owners and partners. Hulu was originally created as a way for NBC subscribers to watch their shows online, a log in was not necessary and there was a lot of free content to watch. Over time more content was added but so were more rules by the time streaming was taking hold and it was becoming more and more popular to “Cut the Cord” Hulu had become a confusing gray area of users, content, on-demand video, and many layers of subscription types. This all needed to be cleaned up.

A wholistic approach to content and user’s needs

Break the tiles

Direct to Show

Deep Browse

Details matter

With the reduced interactivity of the remote it was important to get the details right. We explored ways

Playback

I focused heavily on the design and layout of the player UI. It was important to provide a simple viewing experience while allowing users to “flip” channels in a more efficient way.

Playback controls

Channel Flipping

While designing the Player Pages it became apparent that a major part of Live TV was missing, How do you channel flip? I started asking myself this question and thinking about how we navigate media today. The literal up and down clicks still existed on our new remotes but ofter up was reserved for settings during playback, left and right were commonly used to scrub so down became an obvious choice.

It was apparent that there were two types of flipping:

Exploratory Flipping

This kind of flipping occurs when a user is bored, or when a commercial comes on, it asks the question “Is there anything better on?”

Enter the Flip Tray. We developed the flip tray to show you the systems best recommendation for what you would like to watch, keeping in mind that the last show you were watching may be that. This allows users to quickly pop back and forth between live shows, or completely pivot to another related show. We were able to use this same pattern as the end card as well to keep users in a familiar state and at the same time show off the usefulness of the Flip Tray.

Making it real

We made it habit to show off any new features to our team mates and clients frequently.

Mobile and Tablet

At the same time we worked hand in hand with the mobile design team to make sure we were creating an experience that translated across devices.

All grown up

In late 2017 Hulu launched its new platform and today has secured more than 15 million new users. In 2018 Hulu beat out Crackle for the top spot of Live TV streaming platforms with 3 million subscribers. It is reported that 78% of Hulus views come from Living Room devices..