YouView is a TV platform that blends free-to-air digital TV with On-demand services. The platform is one of the biggest TV services in the UK and also powers BT TV and TalkTalk TV services with over 7 million active users.
I was the Lead Product Designer in team designing the Next Generation version of the Help & Support application. The app provides users with guidance on using the device and troubleshooting common issues as well as navigating features, understanding settings, and resolving technical problems without needing to contact customer support.
Lead Product Designer in Settings, Setup and Help Squad
2 Engineers, QA Engineer, 3 Product Managers (YouView, BT & TalkTalk), Data Scientist, View Support & Trials Group Leads, Scrum Master, 3D Graphic Artist
During my time at YouView TV, the platform underwent a Next Generation relaunch—a complete redesign encompassing backend services, front-end technology, and user experience. Our key design principles focused on creating a more relevant, intuitive, and visually engaging experience. We prioritised scalability for future improvements while implementing a smarter, better-organised information architecture to help users discover content more quickly.
As design lead for the Settings, Setup and Help squad, I led the re-design of our Help Application using Next Generation principles. The Help app offered troubleshooting guides and feature tutorials through videos and articles, helping users solve common issues like weak signals and poor picture quality.
With over 10,000 daily launches, the Help app played a vital role in maintaining YouView's customer-focused reputation and boosting user engagement through quick technical problem resolution.
I collaborated with our internal trials team—who managed pre-release feature testing with our trial users—to gather feedback on the current Help application experience. The feedback revealed significant navigation problems with the existing system. Many users reported having to call customer support because they couldn't find the information they needed in the app.
To gather more insights for the app redesign, I facilitated a workshop with my PM, bringing together key cross-functional team members. This included product owners from BT and TalkTalk, engineers, data analysts, and Viewer Support leads from our call centres, allowing for valuable knowledge sharing and collaboration.
I then established key design principles that guided the entire redesign process, ensuring consistency and alignment with the overall user experience goals.
We were able to establish clear business objectives after identifying the pain points in the current app and understanding how they affected other teams across the business.
One key focus was reducing calls to customer support, aiming to lower overhead costs, as many user issues were already addressed within the Help app. Another objective was to improve customer satisfaction metrics related to troubleshooting on the set-top box, ensuring a smoother and more efficient support experience.
I began with wireframes, collaborating with product and engineering early to define the best approach. Once my squad reached consensus, I presented the designs to BT and TalkTalk product owners, as well as our Product Design Head, securing approval to proceed to concept testing for early validation.
I conducted usability tests with participants from our trials group for key user journeys in the re-design. I created prototypes in Framer so participants could to simulate interactions with the YouView remote via an infra-red receiver, adding realism to the testing process.
BT TV and TalkTalk product owners initially favored my horizontal navigation design for navigating Help articles. However, based on usability studies for large screens, I recommended testing a vertical navigation alternative. I conducted usability tests comparing both designs, and the results showed that vertical navigation significantly outperformed horizontal. This data allowed me to successfully advocate for the more user-friendly option, ultimately convincing stakeholders to adopt the vertical navigation design.
I recorded usability sessions using OBS screen capture software, which allowed me to analyze the sessions and extract verbatim feedback from participants. I then incorporated these insights into my research decks when presenting findings to stakeholders.
Throughout the project, I created prototypes for user research and as 'living' documentation. These examples, built in Principle, documented interactions for navigating carousels and lists. They also served to translate our motion design into code, reducing ambiguity and providing clarity on how each animation transition would appear.
As part of my documentation, I created interaction specifications, examples of different UI states, and flow diagrams. These were added to our internal design wiki and linked to user stories, breaking the app down into manageable tasks for the developers to work on systematically.
For more complex interactions, I used flow diagrams to document interaction.
I created detailed visual documentation to guide the front-end development team during implementation and to support both manual and automated testing processes.
There was a requirement to create ISP-specific versions of features to align with shareholder branding and ensure a seamless customer experience. To meet this, I incorporated both BT and TalkTalk interface colors into the project, ensuring consistency with their respective brand identities.
After each engineering ticket was completed, I worked closely with engineers during detailed QA/UX sessions to ensure the final build aligned with the design specs. I tracked development through sign-off points in the production roadmap, which enabled me to present progress to senior management and incorporate their feedback into the broader team's work.
The Overview screen serves as the user's landing point when opening the app. Based on user feedback from our support team and data insights, I discovered that troubleshooting and support videos were highly valued by users.
To address this, I redesigned the layout by promoting all help videos to a hero carousel at the top, replacing the legacy version, which only displayed four videos and required extra steps to view more. Below the carousel, I added a newly organised, scrollable list of Top Articles, improving discoverability. I also introduced a back navigation feature, making it easier for users to return to the Top navigation when needed.
The redesign is now more scalable, allowing for the addition of more videos to the carousel and more articles to appear in the list, enhancing the overall user experience.
In the legacy app, reading help articles required users to enter each step, read it, back out, and select the next one, creating a disjointed experience and loss of context. In the redesign, I implemented a smoother navigation flow, allowing users to cycle through steps by pressing up or down, with content and visuals loading passively on the right side. This streamlined the process, reducing button presses and improving the overall experience. Additionally, I collaborated with the viewer support team to simplify and enhance the help article content, ensuring it was more accessible and user-friendly.
For the browse screen, where users select help articles by topic, we introduced visually engaging tiles featuring 3D models. I worked closely with our 3D artist to create graphics that connected each category to its corresponding settings area, reinforcing the link between the feature and its help topic.
Additionally, the Error Messages section, which had previously been part of the main navigation, was repositioned as a category within the browse section due to its low usage, making the navigation more streamlined and relevant to user needs.
The "Useful Contacts" screen was redesigned to feature company logos on the tiles, making it more visually engaging. This change allowed users to quickly recognize the brands they were looking for, enhancing navigation and usability. When a user selects a contact tile, a bottom panel appears displaying the company's contact details, ensuring the user stays within the context of the menu without losing their place.
The Next-Gen Help & Support App was successfully launched to 7 million active customers across YouView, BT, and TalkTalk in April 2019
A few months after launch, we collected customer satisfaction data through surveys, internal trials, and online community forums, revealing improved satisfaction with self-troubleshooting compared to the legacy product. Users also shared positive qualitative feedback.
Data showed a 35% reduction in time spent in the app, indicating users were finding solutions more quickly. Additionally, call centre volume decreased by 20% in the first five months, demonstrating the app's success in helping users resolve issues independently.
The app played a key role in the Next Generation launch vision, and our design team received multiple industry awards, laying a solid foundation for YouView’s future growth.
After the release, I looked for ways to further enhance the user experience. One improvement I explored was simplifying the "Useful Contacts" screen. Instead of the existing grid layout, which required users to click in to view details, I proposed a redesigned list that displayed contact information upfront, making access faster and more intuitive.
I also worked on a future Settings redesign, introducing a side panel approach instead of a full-screen takeover. This allowed users to preview changes to display, subtitles, and accessibility settings in real time, improving usability and enhancing the overall experience.
