Overview
AT&T Homezone features digital video recording, movies on demand, and photo and music sharing. This set-top box was one of the first in the market to have dual-tuner satellite receivers, allowing you to watch and/or record different programs in two locations. AT&T Homezone was designed on the MediaPortal platform. I was responsible for the user experience for the telvision and music services.
One project I was heavily involved in was the creation of the music service. The Homezone music service was powered by Yahoo! LAUNCHcast (now known as Yahoo! Music). As the UI Designer for this project, I was tasked to design the Yahoo! LAUNCHcast television experience.
Process
Design Analysis
Since Yahoo! LAUNCHcast was specifically built for the web, I first examined the web navigation and UI patterns used to understand the information architecture and system components.
Insights
Keeping in mind that I was designing for the tv medium, my analysis revealed the following:
The user interface and navigation, must be designed to accomodate the input device being used, in this case a tv remote not a mouse or keyboard.
Its important to maintain some familiarity with the web version. We don't want a completely different tv experience than the web where the user has to re-learn the system.
Ensure that the design does not interfere with the users goals, but still promoting play through dIscovery of new content.
Design
Information Architecture, Wireframes, and Concepts
Television comes with its own design constraints (input device, distance user is from the TV versus from the PC, aspect ratio) and different design rules (navigation, "safe space", fonts and colors). Having a technical understanding of both the flexibility and constraints of the MediaPortal platform several concepts were produced and continually iterated.
Final Design
Due to the limitations of the technical infrastructure at the time, the MediaPortal platform could not support advanced screen transitions and tv gradients. This was the design that was implemented in the first release.
Note: Most of the product design work is not available for public display. For additional details, please contact me directly.