VIDAA is Hisense's premiere TV line and China's best selling Smart TV since it was released back in 2013.

VIDAA was designed and developed by Jamdeo in Oakville Canada.

My Role

Manager of Product Design, Project Lead, Interaction Design Contributor

The Challenge

The Goal

Smart TVs had just begun to enter the market.  Hisense's initial efforts were inferior imitations of Samsung's and LG's products that confused and turned off customers.  Not wanting to always be a generation behind Hisense wanted my team's expertise in building compelling Android products.  This lead to a joint venture with Flextronics and the formation of Jamdeo.

Design and build a Smart TV that would be appealing to traditional TV users and still competitive with Samsung and LG.

The Process

Before we could begin on the design, I performed a thorough interaction design analysis on all the current Smart TV platforms.   That analysis discovered excessively complex designs that were intimidating to classic TV users and certainly impacting adoption.

Similar exercises were done for visual design as well as a deep dive into the history and evolution of the TV experience.

This research led us to the realization that a  completely new approach for Smart TV was warranted. With a set of clear recommendations to follow, we were able to get to work.

First up was optimizing and standardizing the patterns and components used throughout the TV to produce a common design library. 

This ensured consistency throughout and allowed users to more easily familiarize themselves with  the TVs interaction.

The next order of business was getting rid of that clunky two sided remote with over 100 keys and a trackpad.  We needed to return to a simple and easy remote that could be used in the dark with one hand. 

Based on my overall interaction patterns I was able to reduce the button count by 90% and create an industry changing simple Smart TV remote control.

The Design

As the sole Interaction Designer at the start of this project, I needed to very quickly begin design work for a large range of apps on the TV including: Live TV, VOD, Media Center, Application Center, TV Settings, Source Changer, TV Home Panel, and more. As the project picked up steam we were able to add more designers to the team.

To help speed the process high fidelity interaction wires were produced using a common library. 

These wires were used by development to begin work and by the visual designers to guide the work.

I produced the entire TV's initial interaction design.  As the team grew, I was able to handoff mature designs to new members for maintenance.

Our approach was to provide a consistent and cohesive interface throughout.  Following my interaction wires and our foundation design library, the visual designers were able to maintain consistency across hundreds of screens.  This allowed users to move from app to app without a need to relearn any patterns.  The end result was a Smart TV that was far easier to use than any other at that time.

As our work progressed, it became very clear that this would be a product unlike any other on the market.  It didn't make sense to saddle it with an existing brand's legacy.  For that reason , the design team in Oakville took on the additional task of coming up with a new brand worthy of this product.  That brand was VIDAA!

The Results

Based on my interaction design strategy, VIDAA was became the first Smart TV to do away with a cumbersome desktop approach Home Screen and replaced with a simple overlay. My approach to mimicking connected devices by treating key applications as separate silos that could retain state effectively introduced multi-tasking to Smart TVs. These revolutionary changes were later adopted by most other manufacturers.

Hisense, knowing that they had something special, invested in a massive marketing campaign highlighting our new approach to smart TVs.

Within months of launch, VIDAA had sold 8 million units becoming the most successful Smart TV ever sold in China!

On the heels of massive success in China, international releases of VIDAA shortly followed. The first North American VIDAA TV was launched with much fanfare at CES 2014.  In addition to design duties, I was also heavily involved in creating the marketing and messaging of the campaign.

This is one of the many interviews that I did for the North American launch at CES 2014.

Our multi tasking and minimalist approach to Smart TV's garnered much interest during the event and won us the "2014 Best Internet TV of the Year" award.

VIDAA has gone on to become the premier product line for Hisense and has led to many generations of Smart TVs generating tens of billions in sales.

In my six years with Jamdeo, I helped shape and deliver over 12 generations of the VIDAA platform each with a new set of innovations.

VIDAA 4 with Liquid Tiles

VIDAA 5 premium model with enhanced "Touch" remote

Contact

Email: mo.selim@outlook.com
LinkedIn: @moselim

© Mo Selim