One of the first projects I started working on for Pluto TV was designing a new home page that would become the new starting point when viewers launch the app. Previously, the app’s default start state was the channel line-up—a strategy meant for helping viewers understand how the app worked back when it first launched, but the approach became outdated as streaming TV evolved over the years. So my job was to help the team design a new start state that would maximize Pluto TV’s ability to help viewers find content to watch when they open the app.

The whole project took years from concept to release, and I provided research for content discovery patterns, exploration of layout options and advertising units, and analysis of what features and screen layouts were appropriate for the app. Much of our work ended up being analysis of what configurations for content categories and algorithm results might be best for the audience.

After the new home page was released over a year later, viewer feedback indicated overall satisfaction with the new start screen, significant engagement with the features on that page, and improvements in viewers’ satisfaction with the app’s content suggestions.

You can view the live work at pluto.tv, and also play the demo below to see the first release of the new features.

The company was adding a systemwide Kid's Mode feature, and it was my responsibility to make adaptions and adjustments for implementing the new UX and UI elements to versions of the app for nontraditional platforms and OSs: LG TVs, Samsung, Playstation, Xbox, etc.

There were some major differences in capabilities to work around, so I spent a lot of time reconciling those constraints across different platforms to produce a unified experience for that category of app versions...in addition to adapting graphics and layouts for each platform instance.

When I joined the company, content search and discovery features for major platforms were lagging behind competitors and needed an upgrade. I was the lead designer for this initiative and put together the competitive analysis, feature audit, and final designs needed for getting Pluto near or on par with other streaming services.

I designed implementations of real-time search results display, selectable keyword suggestions, algorithm adjustments to improve results relevancy, and alternate keyboards for different Android TV devices.

The work covered app versions for tvOS, iOS, Android TV, Android, web, and nontraditional TV operating systems.

I joined the emerging experiences team to work on a proof of concept project for a VR version of the streaming service. After establishing project direction in a series of workshops that I helped facilitate, I started testing interaction and UI schemes and also experimented with a few elements of video playback (mainly how to generate light emission from video playback to achieve the screen glow you would experience in a dark theater). Also, we decided to use Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit to speed the prototyping process up a bit.

In a later round of prototyping, I went a little deeper into different flows and rough ideas of how to display UIs for discovery, browsing, and selection of TV content.
‍
The proof of concept demo we delivered merged the interaction design work I provided with a completed version of content delivery service for video playback and 2D UI content.