Max and Discovery+ are global streaming services within the Warner Bros. Discovery brand. They are available across multiple regions globally and have a large catalogue of content across, movies, tv, and sports. I was tasked to lead the product design of a new feature called Event Alerts, across TV, Web, Tablet, and Mobile. This feature is an in-player notification system that updates the user on goals, tries, or other sporting moments happening in an alternative video. Thus, allowing them to easily jump to that video to replay what they have missed. The initial launch of this feature was ‘Goal Alerts’, which would be used specifically for TNT Sports Champions League football coverage in the UK where there are concurrent matches (up to 8 at a time). Although, this is one use case with many to be launched in the future, including the Olympics 2024.
Client
Max & Discovery+, Warner Bros. Discovery
Role
Product Design Lead
Platforms
TV, Web, Tablet, & Mobile
Year
2023/24
1. Project Goals
Maximise sports users' experience by allowing them to jump from match to match catching up on all the goals and action.
Design a fluid UX so the user can jump to watch a goal and navigate back easily; limiting friction to watch a highlight.
Create a scalable design pattern that can be used for future iterations, e.g. for further sports such as, tennis, cricket and rugby.
Follow the Max and Discovery+ design principles and language to create a coherent experience across TV, Web, Tablet and Mobile for our existing user base.
2. Design Process
Exploration and Discovery
I started by conducting competitor research to review other products, this included the BT Sport app, I conducted some research on forums looking for specific feedback on the current BT Sport experience.
Based on findings, I came to the conclusion that although this is a useful feature, for some users it can be very distracting and intrusive due to the user's primary focus being on the video rather than the notification. Feedback found online from BT Sport users indicated a large number wanting the affordance to turn these alerts off as they were overly intrusive.
These findings and other user cases in mind I outlined the design principles we should consider with the designs going forward, Non-Interfering, Scalable, and Configurable.
Non-Interfering
By using progressive disclosure of the data, the component was kept small but still displayed the primary information until the user wanted to interact with it to reveal additional information. This reveal interaction was either done by a focus change (up button on TV remote), hover, or tap (depending on web or mobile device).
Scalable
Designing the component to be scalable allows for the feature to be adaptable to all future use cases, such as other sports and notifications.
Configurable
Within the design I added multiple ways for the alerts to be toggled on and off by the user. These were found in the global settings and within the video player as a toggle button. This allowed the user to turn the alerts on and off, affording the user the controls over when they see these alerts. This was done to ease the friction of these alerts being too intrusive for the user.
Gold Medal Alerts for Olympics
Part of this project was to design ‘Gold Medal Alerts’ for the Olympics 2024, this would work in a similar way as goal alerts, but would jump the user to the start of that event or near to the point of the gold medal being won. This feature was also the first to launched on Max, which came with a new design, which was to be more scalable to other content types such as movies, tv shows, and news.
3. Results
After launch we have seen that 10-20% of users are using this feature per video view (interacting with the alert and navigating to another video). We also had a very low number of users turn this feature off (>5%) confirming that this is not seen as intrusive. User surveys also confirmed this.
“I’d leave them ON for all. I think it would be fun. Even if it’s something I’m not interested in it can be nice to just see what is going on. And I guess I can just click the X if I want to
remove.”
p14, Max Web, Sweden
“It doesn't give me any grief that they appear and might pique my interest to switch to a sport I may not have considered watching.”
p10, d+ TV, UK
“I think it's quite a useful feature and allows you to quite easily and quickly change between different live events that are ongoing. If perhaps you follow two sports that are taking place at the same time, in the past I've had to exit out using the conventional back button and then navigate to a different event which is a lot more time consuming than being able to flick through one event into the next.”
p10, d+ TV, UK
“I might use it if I want to flick between events very quickly.”
p7, d+ TV, UK
As the metrics and feedback have shown the feature has improved the viewing experience for football fans and more importantly has not been seen as intrusive within the video player experience.
