Sling

Role: Principal UX Designer / 2015-2017

I joined SlingTV via an innovation lab called Acumen Digital. The CPO brought me on board to enhance all platforms, seeking a more straightforward direction while improving user experience conceptualization and execution. I engaged in extensive exploratory work to expand possibilities and present Sling with fresh, innovative solutions. While some of my contributions are visible in the app, others remain as R&D initiatives.

Sling TV App Design for TV Consoles

The design of the Sling TV app for TV consoles involved a comprehensive approach to ensure seamless user experiences across various devices, each with unique hardware limitations and interaction paradigms. I focused on creating a unified, intuitive interface that performed smoothly across all platforms, from smart TVs to gaming consoles, while respecting each constraint.

Key challenges included managing screen sizes, varying resolutions, and differences in remote control navigation. The design had to be responsive, ensuring an optimized visual experience without compromising performance or usability. For consoles, special attention was given to integrating game controllers as a primary input method, adapting the layout and interactions for a more fluid navigation experience compared to traditional remote control setups.

We utilized a modular design framework to cater to different device limitations, enabling us to prioritize performance and flexibility. The app was crafted to load quickly, minimize memory usage, and ensure smooth transitions between content while maintaining a visually rich experience. This included simplifying interactions where necessary to optimize for button presses and reducing complex actions to enhance ease of use.

I worked closely with developers to ensure compatibility with various streaming devices. We used advanced testing across multiple platforms to ensure the app’s functionality was consistent. This required us to continuously adjust designs to accommodate each device's unique technical capabilities and limitations.

The final result is an engaging, performance-optimized Sling TV app tailored for TV consoles. This app provides users with a consistent, high-quality viewing experience regardless of device.

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Designing the Mobile App

Designing the Sling TV mobile app for Android and iOS was a complex yet exciting project. We aimed to provide mobile users an intuitive, engaging, and seamless streaming experience. We focused on usability, content discoverability, and live sports highlights, ensuring the app delivered an exceptional user experience while remaining feature-rich and performance-optimized.

Usability
To enhance usability, we prioritized a clean, minimalistic interface that ensured easy navigation through a wide range of content. With mobile screens offering limited space, we focused on simplifying interactions and reducing cognitive load. We also streamlined onboarding flows, ensuring new users could quickly get up to speed and personalize their experience.

Content Discoverability
A major challenge was designing an effective content discovery system to help users quickly find the shows, movies, and channels they love. We implemented an intelligent search function combined with personalized recommendations, allowing users to filter content based on preferences, watch history, and trending shows. Highlighting new releases and popular content ensured that users were always presented with fresh options, while intelligent categorization and a user-friendly interface made browsing effortless. Dynamic content rows and real-time updates kept the user interface fresh and engaging, providing an organized yet playful approach to navigating Sling TV’s vast library.

Live Sports & Highlights
For sports fans, the design of live sports and highlights was planned to be a key driver to the app’s success. We created a dynamic, easy-to-navigate sports hub that allows users to access live games, on-demand highlights, and stats quickly. Real-time scores and interactive features such as pause/replay for key moments were integrated to enhance live viewing. Push notifications were implemented to alert users of game updates, allowing them to stay connected to their favorite teams and events even when not actively watching. For highlight videos, we prioritized speed and quality, offering seamless transitions from live to on-demand content with fast-loading, high-quality clips.

The result is a well-rounded mobile app that combines intuitive usability with a rich content experience, all while keeping live sports front and center for fans. Whether on Android or iOS, users can easily access and enjoy their favorite shows, discover new content, and stay up-to-date on live sports, all within a highly engaging, responsive interface.

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Experimental Sling TV App Experience

Redefining Content Discovery and Simplified Navigation

In September 2015, long before Hulu's current UI system launched, I proposed an experimental solution for Sling TV that would revolutionize how users interact with a vast catalog of channels and content. The concept was simple yet innovative: move beyond traditional channel-based navigation and create a content-first approach that resonated more with users' emotional connection to shows and movies rather than the logos of countless channels.

Managing over 500 channels and a massive content library was daunting. My solution simplified this complexity by drastically reducing the effort needed for asset management—eliminating the need to juggle logos and channel-specific assets. Instead, the focus shifted to the content, emphasizing what people watch rather than where it originated. This resulted in a navigation system that was easier to manage and more intuitive for users to interact with.

The core idea was based on the understanding that people don’t watch channels—they watch content. Shows, movies, and live events were the driving forces, and users often connected with these on an emotional level ("I saw something like that," or "I've heard of that show!"). This shift in mindset allowed the app to offer a more personalized, streamlined browsing experience that resonated deeply with users’ viewing habits.

What set the ability to scale across various devices and screen sizes, from smartphones to large-screen TVs? Rather than relying on a complex system of logos and channel-specific layouts, I designed a universal navigation structure that worked seamlessly across a wide array of supported devices, providing users with a consistent and frictionless experience regardless of the platform.

While it was disheartening to see Hulu launch a similar UI concept later, the experience validated the forward-thinking approach behind the project. This genuinely experimental solution prioritized user behavior, content discovery, and simplicity, ushering in a new era of app navigation. It keeps users centered on what matters: the content.