WWE relaunched it’s On Demand video service in Q2 of 2019. The app
showcases live wrestling events as well as the whole past
catalogue of WWE shows, Original content related to Sports
Entertainment and short-form clips.
I was brought on board this project via an agency which I had
previously worked with. The WWE Network is spread across
Responsive Web, Mobile and TV so my previous experience was a plus
point.
I worked extremely closely with the client-side
through all instances of this project and took designs from
concept through to support for the development of the features.
Massive Interactive / Deltatre
World Wrestling Entertainment
2020
Senior UX/UI Designer (contractor)
Coming aboard a project, an issue quickly discovered with the
deliverables was a huge amount of inconsistency across designs.
With this in mind, working alongside the Director of Experience
and Design on the WWE side, we started the work of creating an
atomic design system to cut down the amount issues discovered and
secondly to reduce the number of visual images developers needed
to create the vision of the designs.
We created a component-based design system and with the use of
third-party tools such as Zeplin and Abstract, allowing developers
to instantly see the specifications of the selected components
whilst retaining version history.
This gave more time to focus on the conceptual design challenges
rather than the repetitive smaller tasks.
The WWE Network is a streaming service which allows users to view
any available content from WWE’s 70-year history.
Subscribers can use the interface to invoke any event and any
match from the library to watch on-demand as well as having live
access to a 24-hour linear streaming channel showing curated
popular content.
Alongside historical events, customers can also watch live
exclusive WWE events as well as backstage documentaries.
When I was brought aboard the project there was a bass level of
the design work completed which allowed me to expand upon a base
and start to explore a more creative next step for the project.
By creating reoccurring component-based design system we could simplify the work across projects as well as devices. We ensured that the components related directly to the same components used on the developer side to keep the project simple and the naming conventions consistent
Across the UI the buttons for the experience were recreated to be easier to use and to work across devices. By using expanding buttons we could create one component which covered every use case without remaking the design each time
With an On Demand service the primary action is usually to play content. I spent a big chunk of time trying to make the playback experience consistent across edvices. The user should always be able to face a common UX experience regardless of where they are watching content.
The fans are the central focus of the WWE Network redesign and
there was extensive user research into exactly what the fans
wanted from the service.
One such factor that appeared was that the wrestlers themselves
are one of the most intriguing pieces of the whole product. WWE
decided that a section of the app should be based on the
superstars themselves, giving users clear and easy access to
information about their stars as well as easy access to
career-defining moments and achievements.
Alongside this, we also set to work on creating journies to
content such as Biographies, Champions and timelines of
championships as well as extended views of the WWE Superstars
careers
We wanted to give users the ability to download content that they were paying for, I created a interactive prototype to showcase how that would work
Showcasing the download function
Showcasing the download function
We wanted to make it easy for users to see the progress of their downloads, this flow shows the user journey to download content
We also set up the site map to allow the latest news and articles based on the WWE superstars to be integrated into the app. This allowed us to show the top information from the WWE.com homepage as well as hyperlink out to the website, which would then have some additional information and other area of interest for the end user such as tickets and the WWE Shop for merchandise.
Utalising the Player functionality allowed us to bring highlights from the latest events for the selected wrestler, allowing the user to jump directly into the match involving their favourites. This was seen as a great way for the user to interact with the huge library and opened the doors into collections and older content which could be pushed from a business perspective.
The approach for the client was to give the end-user a unified
experience across multiple f devices. The base WWE app was
released on 10 devices as well as the variants of this hardware
and we didn’t want that to limit any version of the app.
We had to always put the different devices into our minds, working
closely to create bespoke platform interactions whilst retaining
the overall consistency of the UI. This was highly noticeable in
the navigation patterns as each remote control/ gamepad would have
its own unique hardware and buttons would not always correlate.
We also had to really understand the hardware limitations of these
devices and knowing what we could or couldn't do for each
platform. Sometimes we had to make hard decisions to ensure that
performance was good enough for the user to actually control the
content.
The fans are the central focus of the WWE Network redesign and there was extensive user research into exactly what the fans wanted from the service. One such factor that appeared was that the wrestlers themselves are one of the most intriguing piece of the whole product. WWE decided that a section of the app should be based on the superstars themselves, giving users clear and easy access to information about their stars as well as easy access to career-defining moments and achievements. Alongside this we also set to work on creating journies to content such as Bioggraphies, Champions and timelines of championships as well as extended views of the WWE Superstars careers
Platform of the Year
Best SVOD Services
Best OTT or Streaming Experience Cynopsis Best of the Best Awards Best SVOD Services
Best in Digital Sports Media (nomination)
Over the Top (OTT) Content Service
