Design In Television Streaming Services Today: How is it different from other forms of UX and UI design?

This week I narrowed my focus down more specifically to Television and streaming services. I wanted to look at some of the most important concepts and features that come into play when looking at some of our favorite streaming services. While there is a lot that goes unnoticed as people watch their shows, movies, and sporting events on a bigger screen that doesn’t take away from how big of an impact fluent designs can have. Television has drastically changed over the past decade from cable to a more easy and accessible experience in streaming. This has a lot to do with the work of UX and UI designers. In an article I read titled Smart-TV Usability: Accessing Content is Key by Kim Salazar it talks about how top streaming services like Netflix are so successful because their menu is easy to navigate and it saves the user time. The last thing a user wants when they sit down to watch something is to have to spend 5-10 minutes clicking around on their TV remote. While designers in this field do want to make TV menus visually appealing it is also important to map out key features and what screen the user will be brought to with every click of the remote. This presents designers with a difficult task, making interactions simple but visually appealing to keep viewers coming back. 

Another very critical thing I read about in another article by Rusty Mitchell is that as designers we can sometimes get carried away with our work. Essentially, sometimes our ideas are so big and complex that we can get fragmented and divergent with our designs. This can be a huge issue when it comes to Television in particular because it creates inconsistency between content. One of the most overlooked pieces of design is consistency, despite being one of the most important. I think it is really critical for us as designers to realize where and when we need to make changes or refine certain things. 

Lastly as designers working in this new digital and advancing age of TV we need to be more critical than ever. Things like alignment, hierarchy, typography, and color may be less important on a smaller screen, but when designing for a larger TV screen every little thing matters. For example if a typeface is too thin it can seem extremely different and almost unreadable to a viewer. Especially because most people who watch TV typically sit about 10 feet away from their screen. Depending on the screen size elements of design can change visually. This is something the article I read by Molly Lafferty talked about and I believe these are things we need to be thinking about and evaluating. When thinking more about this I remembered a particular project I had worked on in my typography class that reflects this idea. For this project I was making a poster design in adobe. The colors on screen looked perfect, however, when I went to print these colors appeared completely different. 

Overall, after reading more about design in Television it was apparent to me how tedious and aware we need to be. It re-emphasizes the idea that every small tweak or addition to a design should be for a reason.