Sling TV is a cornerstone product for putting live TV online. Many people are cutting the cord and Sling is a great way to still watch the shows you love online without paying through the nose.
“Great designs - gotta catch ‘em all!”
Sling TV at the Apple keynote speech 2016.
I was brought onto Sling due to my experience at HireVue building user research into the platform and making it an important part of product design. Working more closely with designers has taught me that you need to fight for good design, and even if you have a great idea priorities might still stop it from happening or delay you. It has been very eye-opening to see everything happen in real time, and that good implementation of ideas will come from anyone.
APPLE TV WAS A SPECIAL CASE
Apple TV was a bit of an experiment for us, we definitely wanted to make sure it was great but because it was a brand new platform for Sling we could experiment with new ideas and not worry about alienating our current users. We took this opportunity to test out a few different designs that could be called a simple toggle option, but also the flow users would follow to find the content they were looking for.
At Sling, I have worked to get analytics built directly into the Sling app and make sure all designs are tested with real users. Before launching Sling on Apple TV earlier this year we went to do some user testing behind a 1-way mirror. It was two full days of note taking and watching users play with the app, but it was all worth it. We saw many of our ideas break down right away, and spent the down time coming up with new ideas. Not everything fell apart, though, we also got confirmation that many of our changes were great and will be moving to other platforms in future releases.
I have been responsible for testing new features and designs on all of our different platforms (Roku, Apple TV, Amazon, IOS, Android, Android TV, PC, and Xbox). I am also involved in any iteration or original design concepts when the team is just starting a new project. There is still a lot of work to be done, but having a hand in the creation of something that hundreds of thousands of people use in their free time in amazing.