Future TV

In the fall of 2015, Apple was going to finally present the long overdue brand new Apple TV. This was a perfect moment to envision the future of TV experience. I led an internal design exploration project to envision the future of interactions with content on the big screen. As a design team in a software house dealing mainly with iOS, we decided to integrate iOS devices as cornerstones of this experience.

RESEARCH

To get a solid point of reference we started by interviewing a couple of Apple TV users, and later jumped into desktop research, benchmarking and competition overview. This exercise proved to highlight interesting pain points that were reframed as design exploration areas to build the experience around.

DESIGN EXPLORATION AREAS

"When looking for a next movie or series to watch, I only care how much I would like it. My interests are quite specific, and I can't count the times in which ratings like IMDB turned out to be misleading." This got reframed as the first assumption:

1. Put content in context organising the whole content library around the main metric users cares about "How much I would like this?"

"I'm curious what my friends watched, are going to watch or what are they watching right now. I'd be more than happy to join them or spend my time watching something I know I have someone to discuss it with later on". This statement led us to the next one:

2. Provide social context for every layer of the content experience, from planning, through discovery, consumption, up to recall

"Discussing watched movies or sports is hard because all those exciting scenes and situations you would like to share are completely inaccessible. Most of the discussion is wasted looking online for that particular home run or an amazing chase scene." This led to the third one:

3. Design some kind of content diary for easy access to users' favourite scenes and situations

All those insights, benchmarks and ideas laid the foundation for ideation workshops. Soon my biggest contribution to the project arisen as the concept for a power feature we could use to build the whole experience around. Meet the one and only...

MOMENTS LIBRARY

It's a place for all those scenes, moments or situations user found to be interesting. It is the base of the companion app which was a huge part of the whole, multi-platform experience. 

While watching, users can bookmark the most interesting moments with a single tap and re-watch, discuss or share the content on the go. 

With a tap and hold, users can make a high-quality GIF to take the discussion in social media to the next level.

Still, smartphones and tablets are not the only devices with the potential to improve the media consumption experience: the rising popularity of wearable devices promises experiences tailored to fit user expectations to an even greater degree.

Content is made to spark emotions and the simplest way to track these emotions is to monitor the heart rate of the user. Using a synced smartwatch or smart band, the companion app could monitor heart rate and automatically timestamp all the scenes or moments during which the user reacted in some exceptional way.

In the long run, this accessibility of content and structured rewatchability can contribute to habit-forming use which is invaluable for any company selling a product or service in today’s crowded market.

For an in-depth view and even more concept features like Shared Viewing read the whole story.