Case Study: Sling / Dish

Role Product Designer II, Core Experience

Date Oct '22 - Dec '23

Website https://www.dishanywhere.com

Objectives / Tasks

• Conduct primary and secondary research

• Build UI components / library

• Create responsive UI for all devices / platforms

• Design wireframes and prototypes

• Moderated and unmoderated testing

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• Create personas and user flows

• Use design thinking and ideation strategies

• Benchmarking / Data analytics

• Factor in business goals, branding, and company vision

Introduction

Dish has had stiff competition from the streaming TV marketplace. Technology has allowed companies like Google, Hulu, Fubo, and others to makes gains on a significant part of the market by offering cheaper services with an ultra modern experience. Dish on the other hand has delivered a sub par and out dated, and perhaps out of touch experience at twice the price.

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Dish Anywhere started as one of the first apps that allowed customers to watch TV outside of the home. Today, it's a suite of apps that span smart TVs and devices, as well as mobile and desktop platforms. The UX in these apps are the most modern and user friendly when compared to the set top box ("hopper" receiver) but had a long way to go to compete with other streaming apps.

What did customers value in the TV, mobile, and web experience?

Research (The Value Study)

Upon my arrival at Dish, I wanted to understand the value that the customer received from the Dish Anywhere product. I also wanted to understand the differences in the way they valued the portable versions of Dish Anywhere vs. the home receiver.

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Over a 3 month period, I would generate mountains of data by executing a 3 part study comprised of a 800 person survey focused on the sentiment of current features, a data analysis of the same features, and moderated interviews of 15 customers. We ended up with 150+ hypotheses.

The Core Experiences

Dish Anywhere reduces DISH churn by 78.7%.

Hypothesis: Improving the Core Experiences in Dish Anywhere will lead to increased value for the customer and the discovery of more use cases thereby further reducing DISH churn.

Portable devices have a multitude of use cases that lead to more than more core experience.

Use Cases Define the Core Experiences

“Can have DVR shows playing while fixing dinner.”

“I can watch in the bedroom, hotel room, airport, or wherever.”

“I use the Guide on my computer to find shows when watching on the Hopper”

“My husband can watch something different (than) me on TV”

“It is so portable. I go camping and just cant miss my On Patrol Live.”

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“I can watch the next day anytime I want or on breaks at work etc.”

“(Watching TV Shows) in bed”

“I watch news in the car on my way home from work”

“Its easy and i even watch (TV Shows) in the tub”

“It’s convenient when I’m conditioning at the gym. It takes my mind off of the miles I have yet to complete.”

The data changed the way the company thought of Dish Anywhere,
and other mobile products too.

Visualizing the Data

The 3 part study concluded with the identification of:

• The value propositions of each platform

• Feature preference per platform

• Pain points preventing utilization and onboarding

• Common use cases

• The most watch types of content

• Accessibility issues

• Seasonal trends

Outcome: 100+ Hypotheses

The data lead to 100+ hypotheses related to:

• Better messaging

• Creating more types of certain kinds of video shelves

• Login credentials

• Adaptive UIs for accessiblity

• Streamlining UX

• User content algorithms

• Promoting more use cases

Mountains of data that showed why customers valued the product...
and why they didn't.

Leading to a Product Vision

Dish Anywhere's Core Experiences must be made seamless with all of DISH TV’s Products in order to emphasize or promote DANY’s unique use cases and enhance the in-app UX.

Prioritization

I worked with the product manager and tech lead to establish the best path forward given our OKRs, which included adoption, viewership, and app store ratings.

I created the first ever Dish Design kanban board and system to prioritize design initiatives that works together with product management and engineering workflows in Jira.

Prioritizing customer needs.

Initiative 1: Login

The login experience suffered from engineered solutions and had a low success rate. It was also the first and most crucial part of the customer journey.

Research: Data analytics via Quantum Metric, heuristic analysis, competitive research, and cross functional dependency evaluations.

Design: Information architecture, low fidelity wire framing, and high fidelity designs adhering to the Dish.com design system.

Testing: Usability and comprehension testing resulting in 90% success rate for account setup and login.

Initiative 1: Login Results

Drop-offs (▼ 36%)

Objective: To create a more recognizable login experience via industry standard patterns and DISH branding in order to prevent drop-offs.

Result: Drop-offs for first time visitors fall from 36% to 23%, a new historic low.

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Authentications (▲ 32%)

Objective: In addition to improved login flows, users are prevented from being automatically logged out and allow automatic authorization.

Result: Both increase authorizations to 74% from 56% (Oct ‘22, ‘23).

Adoption starts with a user friendly login experience.

Initiative 2: Multi-level Architecture

I mapped the architecture for all three of the platforms including mobile, desktop, and television. This laid the groundwork for the unification of the architecture and UI patterns.

Phase 1: Align top level navigation architecture across all platforms.

Phase 2: Align 2nd level architecture including content shelves and removing non-functional features.

*Analytics and replay data via QM removed the need for card sort testing.

Initiative 2: Architecture Results

OD Page Visits (▲ 214%)

Objective: To re-prioritize On Demand to create visibility of content offerings.

Result: Page visits to the On Demand page have increased ~214%.

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Network Page Visits (▲ 100%)

Objective: To re-prioritize Networks through strategic shelf placement.

Result: Page visits to the collective group of Network pages have increased ~100%.

Prioritizing the features (in the architecture) that matter
the most to the customer.

Initiative 3: Pattern and Style Alignment Across Platforms

Bringing it all together.

Historical Trends Are Broken

Customers in 2023 have used Dish Anywhere more often than years prior.

This is especially true for customers who have been using DANY for 7+ years.

Sessions increased to a higher point than during the pandemic.

*Rates of out of home usage remained constant YoY.

Virtually Every Metric Increased

Despite subscriber decline star ratings, video start success, minutes per user, streams per user, and devices per user all increased in the 3 months directly following the following changes:

Architecture alignment

Style and pattern alignment

Video Performance Improvements

Sling / Dish Design System

My work in unifying the product lead me to be a primary contributor in the video services DSM. In this new role I was one of 2 designers that participated in:

• Developing the token structure and nomeclature

• Designing a rebranded Sling UI taking

• Defining component structure

• Building the component library with mode switching enabled

• Managing tokens via Tokens Studio and Figma Variables

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