E! NewS IOS APP Redesign

E! News is a cable television network under the NBCUniversal division of Comcast. The network boasts an audience reach of ~94 million households and the online entertainment news offering averages ~460 million annual visitors worldwide. 

Responsibilities:

• Conduct user tests and interviews to identify usability issues

• Provide detailed requirements for engineering teams (both in-house and abroad)

• Create user flows for both the external product and the complex custom CMS for internal usage

• Design wireframes and interfaces using Sketch, InVision and Proto.io

• Work closely with the research team to monitor KPIs

The Team

• UX Designer (me)

• Visual Designer

• Motion / Ads Designer

• Product Manager

• Project Manager

• Data Analyst

• Engineering Manager (Overseas, 3rd party)

• Technical Product Manager (Overseas, 3rd party)

THE PROBLEM

While the desktop and mobile web platforms had very recently undergone a redesign, the app itself had largely not been iterated on in 2+ years and was now comparatively outdated. We decided to start the project from scratch with a fresh perspective.

The Process

I gathered data from comScore, Omniture, Adobe Analytics, Pew Research Center, Nielsen Norman Group, and Moosylvania’s Brand Rankings report which I used to create E1’s first-ever user persona. This persona is representative of our primary demographic and kept our design concepts aligned with our user’s needs and abilities.

After analyzing the results of the usability study, I identified key problems with our app’s navigation structure. I created a site map to help visualize the challenges users were experiencing and proposed a new structure to alleviate those issues.

I also put together a lightweight user journey to help stakeholders visualize user behavior and motivations.

Through my efforts, I determined that a happy medium between user goals and business goal would be achieved by prominently featuring News, Videos, and Photos pages within the new design. 

Design COnsiderations

Videos

Videos generate a large percentage of our ad revenue and yet we were delivering an experience that was markedly unsatisfactory to users we tested. Noteworthy considerations include:

• We were changing the orientation of the videos from portrait to landscape automatically and without any indication from the user.

• Closed Captions were often unavailable

• There was a 5 second delay and countdown timer between videos that left users feeling impatient

• Ads would autoplay with sound on without warning and without the option to skip

• We also livestream web shows that would need to be easily accessed through the app

Results

Unfortunately I left E! while the app was still in development and was unable to capture success metrics following the launch. However, measuring success was always going to be a challenge because we used 3rd party tools to funnel out negative app store reviews and new app downloads would not be a considerable indicator of whether the redesign was successful. If I were able to review KPIs I would have looked closely for app usage, total time spent in app, time spent per page, number of pages/video/images visited, and the rate of app deletions.

Following launch the app was nominated for a 2017 Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media within an Unscripted Program.