OSN who are based in Dubai (UAE) are the leaders of entertainment content in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), providing content from all major networks from the likes of Warner Bros., HBO, Universal and ESPN etc.
WAVO a newly formed sub-brand tackling the market of short term subscriptions.
Having historically been a business of long term subscriptions, the changing dynamics of viewing led to a new proposition based on a short term subscriptions.
This involved re-thinking and designing a new app from ground up for sub-brand WAVO across iOS, Android mobile and tablet, responsive web and a TV app.
Very quickly it became apparent to design in a way that the would allow the OSN to re-use assets and components.
Another space for development was instilling collaborative ways of working within OSN, helping create an open forum and a culture where everyone within the business could share opinions and views on improving OSN.
I led the interaction design on the project and aided with UX designing and research. I took ownership of documenting the entire process, highs and lows and voicing them via a blog.
To achieve this it was paramount to work in close sync with the business; traveling back and forth from their Dubai offices working alongside OSN's Head of Product, Vice President of innovation and BA, UX and UI Designers from both client and agency side.
Focusing on breath, understanding experiences in VOD (Video On Demand)
Creating easily readable documents for easy referencing and to generate conversations
Desk research including: Heuristic Reviews, Content structure, benchmarking and industry specific user journeys
Acquiring SME knowledge through workshops.
Understanding a new Architecture
Filipino viewers: found subscriptions to be expensive and would share services across multiple families.
Arabic viewers: Households control being able to monitor what was being viewed. however the degree of monitoring varied between countries within the region.
Most users felt that discovering content on OSN’s platform was difficult and wanted a more fun and engaging way to effortless find new things to watch.
Focus groups allowed us to understand that OSN is known as premium, “un-cut” within the region, viewers wanted to be ensured that WAVO would have the same feel.
A Key to understanding OSNs ask was to gain insight of what the their current world, the offerings were and where WAVO as a product would feed into this. below the ecosystem map I create to showcase this
From the map we understood that OSN have four products however there was a lot of duplication with features and WAVO did not have a fitting.
I proposed a new of linking Apps whereby the Set-top Box “OSN app” would be retired and features spread across other apps, save the business money in the up keeping and finding a way of linking WAVO into the ecosystem.
Taking scamps from workshops and building upon them, working along side OSN's data to understand the catering of metadata and dynamics of how we would design for Arabic reading (right to left) users.
To aid the key stakeholders in adding context wireframes were broken down
Lo-Fi wireframes:
Focusing on breath, allowing speed and exploration, giving me an understanding of the businesses preferred direction.
Hi-Fi wireframes:
Created with motion prototyping in mind but also used statically to add context to types of content
Motion prototyping became a core to our workflow, having it instilled as part of the process allowed me to validate if our design ethos was being met. Tools such as Principle allowed me to take wireframes along with visual designs direct into motion this allowed for:
Freedom in defining brand movement
Understanding of interaction performs as desired
Ability to iterate on the fly
Fluid collaboration with the visual designers, in some cases using visually designed.
Constant evaluation of UX and UI
Testing was a fundamental part of the projects core, Not only allowing us to build confidence in our design, but to also affect culture change at OSN, helping them understand that failing through testing isn't always negative.
8 rounds of testing was carried out at our London offices as well 12 rounds of testing during the workshops in Dubai. This allowed us to gain a better understanding of cultural understanding of digital design
8 rounds of testing was carried out at our London offices as well 12 rounds of testing during the workshops in Dubai. This allowed us to gain a better understanding of cultural understanding of digital design
Testing was a fundamental part of the projects core, Not only allowing us to build confidence in our design, but to also affect culture change at OSN, helping them understand that failing through testing isn't always negative.
“the scrubber movement feels
very Satisfying”
“I Love that theres finally
an app that feels designed for
Arabic but when i switch to English
feels its designed for that too.”
Testing in the middle east we were able to learn that certain movements and designs didn't have the same understanding from country to country.
The great thing about our workflow and tools such as Principle is that i was able to make changes sometimes within an hours. This form of quick iterative designing allowed for maximising time for testing with the business
The the development team based in Hungry it became paramount to create detailed specification documents. Yes, it was time consuming but in the grand scheme of things it allowed everyone to work in harmony the development team
Building of a SDK design system to allow business to re-use for future
Detailed documentation to ensure offshore development team.
Phase two of the WAVO release we began utilising the use of metadata, within assets to enhance the search feature.
Designing for change is always a big statement, but thats was our goal for OSN. With a huge cultural shit at OSN, the business turned to us at the project team to help build a collaborative way of working.
The aim was to create a forum where the entire project team showcased ways of working best quoted by the Executive experience directors.
“Collaboration,
regardless of seniority”
