Baidu Smart TV
UX / UI DESIGN / MARKETING DESIGN
NEW HOME CENTER
At the end of 2016, several Internet companies are beginning to explore the market for smart hardware. Baidu is one of the largest AI and Internet companies in the world. Relying on its own resource advantages, Baidu has positioned its TV products as smart TV sharing systems.
I was working on Tools products for Baidu. Afterwards, I was asked to join the UX design for the new Smart TV team.
TIME
7 Months
ROLE
UX / UI Designer
DELIVERABLES
UX Principle
User flows
Wireframes
User Interface
LINKS
Challenge
The Smart TV team is a young team, it was built rapidly in order to meet the needs of our users. Our challenges were to
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Define missing UX fundamentals
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Continue to build out new features
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Create a scalable system
Here's how I addressed those challenges.
Chanllge #1
Define UX Fundamentals
In many ways, we are currently in a preliminary stage where everyone is trying to figure out how to do this right. How do you design for this array without understanding the needs of each? Seeing this lack, I made it my mission to fill in these details.
Solution
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I traveled with the user research team on some of their interviews and participated in research synthesis.
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I defined user usage scenarios and design boundaries
Deliverable
Baidu TV OS Design Principles
After clarifying the Who and Where, we define the design principles. Defining design boundaries keeps the team on pace all the time. We synchronize design principles to the PM team and the engineer team, which greatly accelerates our delivery.
Remote control
Entertainment consumption
Immersive experience
Shared environment
Designed for families, not individual users
Chanllge #2
Continue to build out new features
The market doesn't leave us much time, and all of our competitors are speeding up. Going live quickly was one of the goals of our work. Within three weeks, we updated the first version, and over the next few months I worked on a total of five more releases, during which time I worked with another senior UX designer on interaction flowcharts and user interface design.
Solution
Promoting Agile in the team, using Scrum as a framework for project management.
Work closely with other team members and communicate efficiently through daily meetings.
Deliverable
Product backlog / Spring backlog / Burn down chart / Project allocation
Project management is visualized so that everyone has clear goals and expectations.
Interaction design draft
Challenge #3
Create a scalable system
With several successful releases, the team started to expand, while more and more representatives joined our ecosystem. How to faster development time, improved communication among all the stakeholders involved in developing the interface (designers, developers, product managers, etc.), and keeping both code and design consistent throughout the site become a new chanllenge.
Solution
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Contributing building our own UI guideline V1.0.0 - V2.1.0
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I joined the guideline building effort: reviewing them with senior designers and engineers, gathering consensus, and documenting the outcome into guideline.
Deliverable
Contributing to UI Guidelines
GUI Guidelines
Interaction design Guidelines
Metrics & Outcomes
This was the fastest-selling Smart TV device at the time of release.
Unfortunately, due to Baidu’s NDA limitations on sharing data, I can’t mention our internal metrics.
Take away
To building a better living room experience, we’re going to have to work for it. Designing a great experience for the TV isn’t easy, most of us are just taking the first steps in learning what can and should be done on the screen across the room. We need to unlearn the intimacy of both mobile and desktop and adapt new patterns. We need to experiment and challenge what a TV can be used for.