Hulu redesign for Millennials

DATE: 2016

PRODUCT: Redesign of the Hulu mobile and web experience.

ROLE: I was IDEO’s project lead and the relationship manager with Hulu leadership. I led two projects with 4 designers and 2 researchers over the course of 1 year.

IMPACT: Our mobile design impacted the redesign of the whole Hulu platform with a fresh and young approach to navigation and recommendations.

Overview of the content inside the magazine "Los Angeles Sports."

Introducing Magazines

Historically, television viewers have been burdened by rigid taxonomies based on outdated conventions or obscure business needs – but that’s not how the Millennial generation approaches to content. They prefer to riff, mix, and appropriate content to generate new meaning.

For the information architecture, we used as reference how we relate to magazines.

Magazines are curated feeds of content based on parameters called “seeds.” Magazines can be user-created, editorially curated or dynamically generated – based on what you watch, how long you watch, where you watch it and which device you use.

The first 3-5 pieces of content autoplay upon opening a magazine. Each piece includes a short clip from a movie, show, or live event to entice the viewer into further viewing.

Example of magazines. Each one is a feed based on a theme or rule, like “15 Minute Fix,” for example.

Browsing through several magazines
and the suggestions inside the “Los Angeles Sports” magazine.

Creating a magazine from a new seed content.

Search with smart suggestions.

Browsing inside a magazine and rating an item.

The TV app version of magazines.

Hulu's website landing page with initial recommendations and then full navigation.

Using the mobile device in conjunction with the TV. Phone on normal position: remote control. Upside-down: browse other content.

Process

After so many years working with the traditional Design Thinking process, I started to see some of its shortcomings in terms of speed to test ideas and learn sooner.

Instead of starting with research and inspiration, I applied the design sprint model to seed the traditional Design Thinking process. The 1-week sprint is especially helpful if you want to quickly test some ideas floating around, but not ideal for uncovering more out-of-box ideas.

This method enabled the team, including the client, to quickly develop a shared understanding of areas of exploration and make early bets for testing.

With that in hand, we ran a more traditional field research and prototyping iteration process, pushing the concepts beyond familiar ideas.

We ran a design sprint to seed the traditional Design Thinking process.

Experience properties and guidelines.

The mobile app flow map.

We created more than 20 interactive prototypes testing 10 different experience directions.

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