The American premium television network, HBO offers a variety of television series, documentaries, sports, movies, and more. HBO Go is an extension of their network, allowing customers with a paid subscription to stream HBO content on demand from anywhere.

The current web design feels impersonal and overly simple, creating a mediocre and uninspiring experience for customers. It is also lacking in essential features, such as content description or a play next episode button, thus making it frustrating for customers to indulge in any content on the platform with ease. The purpose of this project is to redesign the web interface and add and move features to make it easier and more engaging to watch content on HBO Go.

Because HBO has a diverse audience, I decided to conduct interviews with people in and out of my immediate network, but also use the HBO Go reviews customers have left to guide my redesign.

To gain meaningful insight on the needs and priorities of my audience, I asked a series of questions while users interacted with the current website.

Because all those I interviewed referenced HBO competitors, I decided to analyze what they were doing to engage users that HBO Go might lack. I focused on two leading competitors, Hulu and Netflix. These series of comparisons will guide me in determining where HBO Go falls short, how they can rise up to market standards, and what they can do to differentiate itself from its competitors.

After collecting these interview responses and examining competing platforms, I was able to reduce these insights down into three primary concerns that my redesign of HBO Go will tackle.

I took the initial sketches and translated them into simple wireframes. I was able to explore different layouts that best displayed the information to the user and ease their watching experience. I added many features that I deemed suitable in aiding the viewer and minimizing the frustration that many users expressed in their interviews and reviews.

For the final prototype design, I wanted to ensure that I continued the night time/dark theme that HBO Go applies across all platforms to maintain their brand identity despite updating the overall interface. Like mentioned throughout my process, I hoped to build this redesign around the users and integrate systems and features that would ease their watching experience. Ultimately, I wanted the user to feel like a more valued customer and excited to explore all the content that HBO Go has to offer.

What was most significant about this project was that I was able to analyze existing systems and explore ways of improving them. Especially conducting the competitive analysis study, I was able to really understand why HBO Go's competitors' were so successful and users were engaged with their products. A lot of excitement I experience with being a designer comes from designing for others in mind and this project has fueled that interest, while also teaching me about how to design for understanding as the end goal.

In the future, if I were to have time to come back to this project, I would like to produce a few more iterations and test the level of usability across a more broad audience. I would also like to redesign the mobile app as well to create a stronger connection between HBO Go's web and mobile platforms. I would Like to be able to think more deeply about their on-demand access to content and how to best implement that for different mediums, whether that be mobile, web, television, etc.