Transcoder Streaming on Mobile


Setting up transcoder streaming lets customers download recorded shows to their phones or tablets and stream them from anywhere in their home or while away from home.


Role: Lead UX designer on a team of 2 other designers, a researcher, and a UX manager.

Duration: 2015 - 2016

Traditionally, making shows mobile meant having to purchase TiVo’s Desktop Plus software, then transferring recordings to your PC and transcoding them to a smartphone- or tablet-friendly format.

Background and context

Lead UX Designer

  • Responsible for the design concepts, collaboration with Research, UX writing, Visuals, and on-time delivery of flows

  • Collaboration with Engineering for spec handoff, all edge cases, and complete error handling

  • QA test plans, testing, and bug tracking

My role

Provide convenience for users who want to take their recorded shows to go. TiVo DVR owners could now watch their shows on mobile anywhere in their home or while away from their home network.

The opportunity for target audiences

I worked with Product and Engineering to capture technical constraints before starting the designs. We collaborated throughout the design lifecycle to ensure that all edge cases and error conditions were handled with the appropriate messaging and workarounds.

The process

When a download is initiated, action buttons vary on the Details screen of the episode or movie screen.

  • Downloads in the queue can only be deleted

  • In-progress downloads can be watched or modified. Child actions of MODIFY include pausing, resuming, or stopping the download. The in-progress download cannot be deleted until the download is complete.

Future versions of this model included a swipe-to-delete function and the ability to delete in-progress downloads.

Download states

Initially, I had designed the UI based on the assumption that users could download multiple shows simultaneously. Due to technical constraints, we could not achieve that. I came up with iconography to indicate the various states of download progress. I created interaction models that specified rules for pausing and resuming downloads in various orders.

Workarounds

This feature increased app downloads by 10%. In-home and out-of-home streaming time averaged 28 minutes per session. In 2016, we increased our CSAT scores with OOH streaming by 25%.

Outcome