Learning from Yahoo! TV Design project
How to create an impressive design when faced with challenges in different fields from UI/UX?
My experience includes the media industry and e-commerce both B2B and B2C Marketing. I have diverse working experience with a startup, software service company in Asia, and large multinational corporation.
I currently working as a product designer in the Yahoo! Mobile Design Team. During this period, I have done various projects. Today I would like to share an interesting project that is different from daily work- Yahoo! TV Studio Design.
The topics I would like to share today are:
1. The story behind the project
2. Reach a consensus with the core team through the workshop
3. Design concept and results
4. Five things I have learned from this project
THE STORY BEHIND THIS PROJECT
Since July 2016, Yahoo! TV has had lots of high-quality programs, 佼心食堂、唐綺陽談星室、Melody瘋時尚 which has attracted more than 200 million views. We recorded these high-quality programs in a corner of our office. This place even has a name called “Garage Live Room”.
Along with the user’s growth, Yahoo! decided to upgrade the TV Studio that cost millions of dollars. I am one of the major designers in this project. We initiated the workshop to reach a consensus. As a result, we decided on the “Dream Fly” proposal as our core design concept. Not only the creators can fulfill the dream they have, but also the audience can fly together by watching a video.
We received the challenge that the design team needs to complete the whole studio design details and cooperate with the interior design company within 2 months.
Aligning with stakeholders
The biggest challenge was the previous lack of a consistent brand/product design system for Yahoo! TV. Our mission is to solve the problem and convey brand value to the user.
Therefore, we initiated the design sprint workshop for the core team including PM, Editor, Marketing, Designer, and Engineer. The team members wrote down the ideas and shared them with others then reached a consensus by voting.
After the workshop, we organized the ideas and came out with three design concepts through the design.
We invite everyone to the studio to see our final design proposal, which allows decision-makers to have more imagination and help decision-making.
Design Concepts
The key point is whether the story of the design concept can link the value and spirit that the brand wants to convey, and allow users to generate emotional connections.
We usually do strategic planning. Assuming that there are three proposals, our approach will be conservative, innovative, and balanced. We will use chromatics, philology, and iconography to make differences.
Conservative: Maintain the familiarity of existing users, may lack freshness
Innovation: There is an opportunity to attract new users, and it may increase the learning cost of existing users
Of course, the above two types have their own pros and cons. The senior designer will know how to make a more balanced version and promote it.
We got feedback from high-level meetings, so we decided to explore “DREAM FLY” more and put “Together” into the final proposal.
The vision of Yahoo TV is to create a platform that encourages creators with dreams can get on the Yahoo Dreamliner and move towards their great dreams together. So the whole concept comes from PLAY + FLY + DREAM.
The color is different from the previous Yahoo purple. We use high-chroma color matching to make the overall space full of joy, youth, and vitality, with a complete visual design system.
The Yahoo! Dream is inspired by the airport. Letting the guests know which studio they are going to is the most important task of entering the studio. We have designed a clear indicator system and get positive feedback from users.
Design Highlight — Anamorphic Design
In particular, the design needs highlights to make users impressed by you. We used an Anamorphic Design illusion to display the three-dimensional logo in the walkway to the studio, and finally became a check-in attraction for everyone to visit.
The design challenge here is how to match our concepts and ideas with the interior design company and produce the best results. Through the prototype and communication, we have also participated in many construction supervisions.
Results
Although the design process is very short and we don’t have so much interior design experience, through design methods, design iterations, and listening to users, I am very happy to be able to complete this impossible task with the team.
I won the LEAD award (Exceed customer expectations) for this project.
Press
Yahoo! TV’s first overseas digital studio was settled in Taiwan. The Studio’s grand opening was in May 2017, and there were a lot of media reports about the design of the studio. This project was a great success.
Visual system extension
Five things I learned
From this project, I learned five things:
- Involve the core team as early as possible- If we did not hold a consensus workshop at the beginning to reach a consensus of product vision. Even if we make a very amazing design without conveying core value to users. It will not be considered a successful design
- Strategic proposals bring more power to designers — Although many people will say that design is subjective, we have to provide strategic proposals such as conservative, innovative, and balanced aspects, which allows designers to use a different method to describe the ideas.
- Coming up with a MAGIC MOMENT — Think about an impressive point for your product. People will remember the feeling the product brings to them.
- Design is an iterative process -As long as people use your product, designers must humbly accept any feedback and accept it and solve it.
- Thinking about design from the brand point of view When designing products, we must use the consumer’s point of view. Understanding how they recognize and interact with the brand has become an important choice for their solutions.We’re Hiring
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