Liberty Global
Overview.
Liberty Global is one of the world's leading converged video, broadband and communication companies, with operations in six European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Telenet and UPC. The company has working-operations in numerous cities, including Amsterdam, Netherlands. Here the digital team was tasked with providing a widescale European relaunch for their television and mobile interface. The timescales were particularly tight, meaning those in the digital team were required to complete several user stories daily to guarantee agile sprints were concluded on time.
The Challenge.
Core to LG's strategy relies on understanding how customers engage with the companies products. Creating a one size fits all interface provides numerous difficulties and challenges.
The standard convention was out of the window throughout, as within the confines of our Amsterdam office we setout designing the new television interface for up to 6 European nations. All of which had differing hardware, including the remote control. We had to also consider accessibility, a much more extensive array of personas, as well variants based on whether or not imagery was available universally.
My Approach.
Individually this was an excellent opportunity primarily as I had never worked on a television interface in my career. How an individual interacts with a television remote control is entirely different from somebody accessing a responsive website, or a mobile app
As a designer, you must consider at the core of everything is the remote control, and begin to understand how people use it. However, like how individuals engage with websites they do so sporadically. They may start a show on their mobile app on the bus ride home, then conclude watching it on their 42 inch TV. How people consume televisual content is no different from how they may consume any other piece of content.
Image: Liberty Global setup box & controller
Each sprint undertaken was done so by fully engaging with the previously launched product. It was about understanding how it worked historically and identifying how we could improve this product going forward. Fortunately, my geographical position within the office allowed me to interact with a television and gorilla user test where necessary the interface in its current state.
I worked along-side business EPAM analysts based in Minsk, Belarus, who had undertaken several exploratory studies identifying core user stories required for the interface to be successful. These and working closely with product managers ensured the output was rationalised and relevant throughout the creative process.
Design Objectives.
As a team, we converged around the following objectives or goals which our output had to comply with:
- The interface should be intuitive and easy to use for all.
- Customers shouldn't get trapped in dead-ends.
- Consider all variants no matter how trivial they may seem.
- Remember the customer, what are their needs?
- When can we test this?
Image: Defining design objectives
