This is a personal design exploration and exercise to redesign an entertainment app my family loves.

Background

The Apple TV+ app is a streaming service provider that runs on a couple of platforms from Apples own Apple TV streaming boxes to other devices such as the firetv, roku and also Smart TVs, gaming consoles, iPhones, iPads and the web among others.
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With Apple TV+, one can watch Apple Original shows and movies made exclusively for Apple which are also available on a family sharing plan.

The Challenge

In my household we love the plethora of shows available on the Apple TV+ app. We currently use a family plan and due how often i use this app, I discovered a few snags that i believe could be improved upon.

- How could i make it easier to switch between profiles on a family plan?
- How could i reduce the number of steps it takes to switch profiles on the app?
- How could i make it easier to personalize user profiles?
- How could i make it faster to identify the logged in user profile at any given time?
- How could i make the tv app navigation more user welcoming?
- How could i make the user profile switching experience more delightful

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The painpoints

The Apple TV+ app is beautifully designed, however managing multiple user profiles is a really tasking process for family accounts.

A lot of times when logged in, we are unable to distinguish the logged in profile as there is no way to determine that at launch of the app and a lot of times it means i have messed up my wife's watch list and vice versa especially if we are catching up on the same show at different times.

To ensure that i wasn't approaching this redesign from my solo bias, i decided to ask friends who have this similar challenges and others what they thought on the experience.

A lot feedback received did match the problems i had identified and with this i proceeded to create a design solution for the tv app.

Replicating the Apple TV app interface

I had to replicate the app interface in figma to do this i had to find a way to connect my 4K firetv stick to my macbook to capture screenshots of the current interface

Wireframes

Design components

Getting feedback

To make sure i was not just solving a personal pain point with the Apple TV app, i ensured that i got feedback from others regarding the ideas i had for improving the app.

User profile selection upon app launch

Adding the logged in profile to top navigation bar

Switching profiles and editing profiles

Selecting profile photos

Part of the feedback gotten was to that users wanted to be able to display an array of photo options from emojis to icloud profile images.

Switched profile photo

Final Results

Apple does design amazing products and the Apple TV plus app is one of them and this was a personal exercise to approach solving the profile switching and approach the design differently. The final prototype was created in Figma.