Media Center - Mo Selim

A powerful built in media application that was able to aggregate and organize all a user's media into a single collection optimized for TV use.

My Role

Manager of Product Design, Product Owner, Project Lead, Interaction Design Contributor

The Challenge

The Goal

Media playback on most TVs in 2011 consisted mostly of a file explorer style interface that belonged on a computer not a television. Add to this the massive amount of content to be found in a typical home scattered among countless devices. This area was ripe for improvement and innovation.

Create the industry's best media playback experience that takes advantage of the visual medium and provides a single and effortless point of playback for all the disparate media sources in a home.

The Design

Being a lifelong media aficionado I was more than ready to take on this challenge. I had been building my own personal media apps for years, so I already had a solid foundation to work from.

As we had already established a full Foundation Design on the VIDAA TV project, it was important to adhere to the patterns and components already defined.

Each application needed to behave consistently with each other so that users would only every have to learn how to use them once.

[ApplicationName] [DetailDesignType] Specification

I organized the application’s Information Architecture to display content in a more meaningful and easier to navigate pattern that the typical file folder structure.

I devised a simple method to connect devices to the Media Center and enable device scanning. This included everything from local drives, to networked DLNA servers, all the way to a wide range of cloud storage options.

As per the project process, high fidelity wires were provided prior to completed visual design so that development could begin with fewer delays.

My approach allowed Media Center to provide all the content in a single, easy to navigate collection without any of the complexity found in nested folders. Logical groupings made content management a dream. Even individual songs scattered across multiple devices and cloud accounts would be presented within the single album they belong to.

For our North American product launch, Hisense chose to highlight our media capabilites as one of the TV line's key selling features. I provided scripts and workflows that were used drive marketing campaigns as well as all promotional material.

The Result

The VIDAA Media Center application was included in over 12 million Hisense TVs. It continues to provide a single curated media experience for many millions of families world wide.