SOONER for Apple TV

The brief

SOONER is a curated film and series streaming service run by my long-time clients EYZ Media and ContentScope. Apple’s updated tvOS interface guidelines meant the Apple TV app needed a redesign to feel native again, without disrupting an established product and its viewers.

My role

Lead product designer, and my second tvOS project. I owned the guideline audit, interaction and UI design, and the Figma prototypes, and worked directly with the development team through implementation.

Approach

• Guideline audit: mapped Apple’s new tvOS patterns against the existing app architecture to decide what to adopt, adapt or keep.
• Designed for the remote: reworked Discover, Channels, Categories and Search around the tvOS focus model, so browsing works naturally from the sofa.
• Faster sign-in: a QR-code login lets viewers authenticate on their phone instead of typing credentials with a remote.
• Room for the business: in-app promotion slots built into Discover without breaking the browsing flow.
• Iterating with engineering: mockups and prototypes reviewed with the developers in short cycles, keeping every design decision buildable.

Outcome

The redesigned app shipped to the App Store and was well received by the client and its viewers. It continued a long-standing partnership and showed how quickly a product team can adopt new platform guidelines when design and engineering work side by side.