TV Recordings · Case Study

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The whole story

The problem Fragmentation

Designed in 2012 and untouched since 2015, Recordings had fallen behind: up to 500 recordings on a single page, and seven different implementations across seven platforms.

The insight Finding, not recording

Pulling together knowledge scattered across departments showed the bottleneck wasn't recording a show — it was managing and finding what you'd already recorded.

What shipped One Recordings, everywhere

A dedicated home for TV Series, one consistent experience on every platform, select-all/delete-all, and a smarter default sort with manual filters — shaped through a GV Design Sprint and tested before a line of code shipped.

The impact It worked

+6% average duration of watched recordings per eligible user, seven fragmented builds unified into one, and — per Customer Support — complaints turning into praise.

Reel of the redesigned Recordings screens

01

Context

A killer feature that lost its magic

Wait — TV Recordings, like old-school VCR but on your phone? Yep. And Smart TV, tablet, computer and many more. Zattoo is a TV platform for IP-based transmission of live channels and video-on-demand across a wide range of devices, and Recordings — record a live show, watch it anytime, like TiVo — is a core distinction of the Premium product.

The problem

Designed in 2012, by 2019 the feature had gone from killer feature to an example of inconsistent product development.

2015Last updated four years ago

Competitors pulled ahead while Zattoo's recordings fell behind the standard.

500Recordings on one page

"We have been waiting for the series recording function for years!!"

7 = 77 platforms, 7 builds

Seven different implementations of the same feature, on seven different platforms.

02

Discovery

A puzzle with scattered pieces

Knowledge about how recordings were actually used was scattered across departments. My first responsibility was to gather it and make sure the team reviewed it together before we started designing anything.

Assembling the puzzle

Thomas Data Analyst

11% of users have 50–500 recordings, 81% have 1–9, and 7% have 100–500.

Sylwia Head of Customer Support

Monthly requests from users about the possibility to delete multiple recordings at once.

Martin User Researcher

In usability testing, participants found it easy to record a show, but didn't understand the iconography or the status changes.

Nicolas Product Manager

Movies are the most recorded type of show, but Series are the most watched content.

One key moment

Recordings is a complex feature. To make a real impact, we had to break it down and identify the most important pain points. We decided to focus on what happens after the user records a show: the management and find-ability of it. I also worked with Product and Business Intelligence to set up a dashboard tracking the relevant KPIs going forward.

Diagram mapping the user journey toward retention through recordings — Mapping the journey from recording a show to actually watching it.

Hypothesis

Users "forget" about their recorded content because we offer a limited way of browsing and finding it.

KPI

Time watching recordings

Hypothesis

Users can't watch serial content seamlessly because we don't group episodes & seasons of a show together.

KPI

Time watching series content

Hypothesis

It's difficult to delete unwanted recordings, so users don't stack as many as they could, and power users get frustrated.

KPI

Number of recordings per user

The insight

The bottleneck wasn't recording a show, it was finding it back later.

03

Designing

Sprint, prototype, test, iterate

The redesign of Recordings was an opportunity to introduce GV Design Sprint workshops at Zattoo. It was my responsibility to organise and lead the sprint with the relevant business stakeholders, turning three scattered hypotheses into one aligned direction.

Prototype, test, iterate

Once the concept for mobile and web was ready, we built a prototype in InVision and tested it during the Design Sprint. For TV, I paired up with a software engineer to build an interactive prototype. The goals were:

Testing the usability of the new design.
Validating the concept with current and potential Zattoo users.

The journey to Series on the InVision prototype for tablet.

Result

The findings were wording and minor usability issues. We iterated and got the green light to build.

04

What shipped

7 platforms, one experience

Recordings combines a polished look and feel with a clear, familiar interface.

Showcase of the redesigned Zattoo Recordings experience across devices

A home for TV Series

Recorded TV Series now have a dedicated category, and each Series has its own page.

On Series pages, users can browse episodes by season, delete multiple episodes at once, and reorganize episodes.

Series detail page showing episodes grouped by season

Consistency

Before the redesign, there were seven different implementations of Recordings on seven different platforms.

The experience is now consistent across all of them, both in look-and-feel and UX.

Consistent recordings UI shown across multiple device types

Select all, delete all

Zattoo users can record up to 500 items, and cleaning up the storage had become a hassle for many. Not anymore.

Users can now select multiple recordings and delete them at once.

Select all and delete all recordings interface

The user is in control

We designed a new default clustering and sorting system to accommodate most use cases.

Additionally, filters and sorting can be manually set up for users who need to cluster content their own way.

Filters and sorting interface for recordings

05

Design system

From Zattoo's web language to a TV-native system

Zattoo already had a design language on web, but nothing built for the 10-foot experience: remote-first navigation, focus states, safe areas, and the coarser type and spacing TV demands. I evolved that web language into Zattoo's first TV design system, adapting existing components and building the ones TV needed from scratch.

That system is what let seven platforms ship one consistent Recordings instead of seven more one-off builds, and it outlived this project: later features shipped faster because the components already existed.

Recordings across four tiers: 4-column mobile, 8-column tablet, 12-column desktop web and TV, each with its own nav, grid, card, target and focus rules — Four tiers, one system: nav, grid, card ratio, target size and focus behaviour defined per screen class.

06

Results

* For confidentiality, exact figures are omitted where noted

Redesigning Recordings was a stepping stone for Zattoo. Processes were successfully improved, and the relevant KPIs kept climbing after launch.

+6%

Average duration of watched recordings per eligible user — the metric the whole redesign was built to move.

7 → 1

Seven fragmented implementations became one consistent experience, look-and-feel and UX, across every platform.

Sentiment ✓

Customer Support complaints turned into praise: "The new recording function has become really tip top. So much praise from my side." — Premium user

Recordings experience before the redesign — Before.

Recordings experience after the redesign — After.

07

Learnings

Shipped, then learned

The redesign set the bar for the Product Design process at Zattoo: research gathered before designing, a Design Sprint to align stakeholders, prototypes tested before building. But after releasing on the first platform, it became clear we would have benefited from more, tighter iteration cycles rather than committing the full scope up front across all seven.

Seven platforms, one page, and 500 recordings people had forgotten about. Recordings didn't need to be bigger — it needed a coherent home.

Bringing the magic back to TV Recordings

I only have 2 mins

Context

The problem

Discovery

Assembling the puzzle

One key moment

Designing

Prototype, test, iterate

What shipped

A home for TV Series

Consistency

Select all, delete all

The user is in control

Design system

Results

Learnings

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