Preferred Video Service
The 'Preferred Video Service' (PVS) project is part of the syndication projects focused on supporting US customers in setting up their TV providers as they go through the TV onboarding journey.
Client
Team
2 Product Manager
1 Developer Team
1 UI Designer
1 Copywriter
My Role
UX researcher
UX designer
Conduct A/B testing
Time
Feb.2023 - Apr.2023
9 weeks
Context
Bought by US giant Comcast in 2018, Sky now brings its vast TV products expertise to a whole host of TV syndication partners, expanding the reach of its TV Operating System (TVOS) on a global scale.
Context
Bought by US giant Comcast in 2018, Sky now brings its vast TV products expertise to a whole host of TV syndication partners, expanding the reach of its TV Operating System (TVOS) on a global scale.
Debrief
What can PVS affect?
Selecting a PVS can affect linear TV channels, TV guides (how they’re ordered in the UI)
What TV providers will be included in the TV onboarding journey?
At the initial launch, the choices of TV providers include Spectrum, Xfinity Stream and Xumo TV (default, always included), with more partners to come.
Spectrum & Xfinity Steam
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Paid for by the user
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Purchased from partners
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Login credentials will be checked at the back office.
Xumo (Default)
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Free (ad revenue)
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Default, always be included
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No manual login required
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If users don’t have any TV provider or skip it, they will automatically continue with Xumo as their TV provider.
Future TV providers
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YouTube TV
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Sling TV
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Pluto
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Tubi
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Freevee
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Hulu (?)
Brief
Develop and design a global UX solution to support a brand new functionality for Xumo (a US syndication partner), enabling customers to personalise their TV experience with a preferred video service (PVS). The UX guides through setting up a PVS, shows the impact, and informs how to manage it (make changes) later
"100 pages brief???"
Final Design Overview
Initial Exploration
Where should the PVS step sit in the TV onboarding flow?
Background: In 2021, the TV onboarding flow went live for the first time on Sky Glass, which included complex steps such as network connection, remote pairing, account association, etc.
To ensure the onboarding journey is smooth and seamless, I categorized different steps based on their properties, such as connection, configuration, personalization, and finally, the home screen. These steps are progressive, starting from setting up the device, then linking an account, and finally personalizing the account. Since the PVS is an account-level feature, so I put the PVS step after the account activation step and in the personalization section.
PVS Selection in the whole onboarding flow
What could the PVS selection screen look like?
I decided to go with the rail selection option and the reason is visual images are easier for people to recognize the brand, and the rail layout allows the user to reach skip at a touch of a button on the remote control.
What could the user flow be?
User flow exploration (Click to zoom in)
1st iteration
After discussions with the product manager and the legal team, there were some points that I needed to take into account:
1. More TV providers will be available in the future and users may have more than one TV provider, which means we must allow users to be able to choose multiple providers at this step.
2. It is a legal requirement that the user must agree to share viewing history (T&Cs) with the chosen provider in order to use the service, if not, the user will continue to use the default provider, which in this case is Xumo Play. This means that viewing and agreeing to T&Cs is a mandatory step in this flow.
Click to view all the changes in detail here👇
Interactive prototype (Click to go through)
1st iteration user flow (Click to zoom in)
Challenges & AB Testing
As different companies have their own default TV providers (The default one must be included), this PVS template needs to be scalable to meet the needs of different partners.
From a business perspective, the business wanted to show its default provider on the rail as well. However, it may confuse the user as they cannot deselect it.
So I designed two different ways to display the default TV provider and decided to do an AB testing to:
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To validate that users understand which TV provider they selected
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To measure people’s understanding of the default PVS and how it works
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To measure people's understanding of the interactions
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To compare the two design solutions and understand which one performs better
I ran two unmoderated usability tests on UserZoom with these two prototypes and asked participants to think out loud while completing the tasks, followed by a questionnaire to verify their understanding.
Here are part of the questions. You can also click 'View study' to have a look at the whole testing.
Part of the questions in the testing (Click to zoom in)
Try the usability testing prototype with the remote here👇
Study 1 Hide the default TV provider
Study 2 Show the default TV provider in the rail
Testing Results
In a limited time, I got 13 participants for each study, 7 with Xfinity/Spectrum, and 6 with other providers/who don't have one. After watching all the recordings, I got some very interesting findings from the testing:
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For study 1 (Hide the default provider), most participants understood to press select and then continue
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For study 2 (Show the default provider in the rail)10 of 13 participants felt confused and didn't know what to do when there is a pre-selected tile.
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Comprehension of the displayed providers: Participants with other providers/ who don't have a provider (x7) perceive the TV provider on the screen as something that is offered to them.
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Most participants in both studies didn't expect to land on the home page after selecting confirm and expect a confirmation step.
Read the full report with the interesting findings here👇
Usability Testing Report (Click the arrow to go through)
Watch interestng video clips from the testing here👇
Testing video clips
Based on the testing results, I iterated the flow by changing these:
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Go with the "hidden default provider" solution and only show the default provider in the copy.
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Improve copy to avoid confusion, replace the word 'default' with the actual name.
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Add a loading screen before landing on home to set expectations for users.
Final flow (Click to zoom in)
Voice Guidance, Testing and Iteration
In terms of accessibility, I also drafted voice-guided scripts from the beginning when designing the process.
Part of the voice guidance scrips
After going through the scrips with developers there was an issue that I need to address:
From a technical point of view, voice guidance can't detect the status changes, which means that voice guidance can't read 'selected' or 'unselected' when the user focuses on the tile.
Because of these technical limitations, I had to remove all the status hints. In the end, I decided to add a conclusion that tells the user what they selected when they clicked "Continue" before they go to the next screen.
I tested this with an accessibility tester, who is blind from a past accident. During the test, I read the scripts to him and asked what he thought. His feedback was positive, he said he liked the conclusion and also suggested prompting the rail direction when the user firstly lands on this screen.
Iterated voice guidance scrips
Final voice guidance scrips (Click to zoom in)
Final Design
What I learned
I've been thinking about what makes a good project for my portfolio. A project with a very fancy layout? Or one that has a very complicated flow?
No, not those ones.
I want to choose this 'small' project. It may seem like a small project, but it contains a lot of food for thought. Throughout the whole process, I had to balance business needs and user experience. I've learned a lot about how to communicate with product managers to understand business needs, how to explore design solutions from different perspectives, how to get the copywriting team on board with a new project, how to plan research and conduct tests to validate the design, think about accessibility from the very beginning, and so on.
Thank you for reading all the way to this point and I hope you enjoyed it. Last but not least, I would like to say a big thank you to the people who've helped with this project.