UX Design Lead
•
Qualcomm / FLO TV
•
1 year
•
2010
FLO TV Personal Television
Designing a new product category — live mobile television — from the ground up.
ROLE
UX Design Lead
Company
Qualcomm / FLO TV
Duration
1 year
Year
2010
The Challenge
FLO TV was a new product in a new category: a standalone touchscreen device for live mobile television, independent of phones or laptops. There was no established UX pattern to follow, no comparable product to benchmark against, and the audience spanned a wide range of technical comfort levels. Everything had to be invented.
The Solution
The FLO TV personal television that provided viewing live TV in any city with a FLO TV broadcast. A sleek touchscreen device that people could take with them on the go and stay up to date on the latest news, sports, and series episodes.
"We were genuinely inventing the interaction patterns as we went. There was no playbook for a touchscreen TV in your pocket."
— Daniel Rivas, reflecting on the FLO TV project
Outcomes
0→1
New Product Category
1 year
Design Leadership
National
Product Launch
The process
1
Discovery & Research - Summary
Conducted ethnographic research — in-home sessions, field observation, and diary studies — to understand when and where people wanted live TV outside the home.
Identified key contexts: commutes, youth sports sidelines, waiting rooms, and travel.
These contexts drove fundamental UX decisions around persona generation and contextual usage.
Needs
Users were looking for ways to pass the time while alone. The iPhone had just come out, but didn't have the large data capabilities supported by cellular networks of today. Long form content on the go wasn't easily accessible.
Problems
Users couldn't aways make it home in time to watch their scheduled TV shows.
Sports fans might miss out on key moments during big games or matches if not in front of a TV.
People didn't always have a way to record their shows.
Findings
Live news and sports had the largest appeal to users.
Children's programming appealed to users with kids if they had to commute with them.
In New York, pedestrians wanted to listen to content on the way to work since they couldn't watch while walking.
Generally, people only had a few shows and networks they watched of the many available to them on their home cable service.
2
Definition - Summary
Designed the full UX system for a touchscreen-first device: channel navigation, live guide, recording management, and parental controls — all without physical buttons or a traditional remote.
Established design patterns for a new product category, many of which had no prior art to reference.
Opportunity
Users want to watch long-form content during long commutes and wait times.
The appeal of unmissable sports moments provides a compelling reason to use mobile TV.
People who want background content playing during sedentary jobs will find mobile TV useful.
Personas
Television viewers on the go.
The March Madness Bracket Maker: wants to watch college basketball during tournament season, where games occur at different times throughout the day, and has filled out a predicted bracket.
The News Junky: wants access to live news and stocks throughout the day.
The Tired Parent: wants to let their kid(s) watch their TV shows in their room, leaving the primary TV available (or silent).
The Commuter: on the way to work, wants to catch the news or last night's TV episode they missed.
Wants/Needs
Users want to be able to catch an episode if they missed it at some point during the day.
Users want their favorite channels or programs that appeal to them.
Users want content pushed/delivered to them, so they don't need to go and find it.
Pain Points
There's no way to pause a live TV broadcast and continue viewing later from where the user left off.
Service isn't available everywhere, only in certain cities.
3
Design - Summary
Led iterative design across 3 hardware prototype generations.
Designed for constraints unique to the device: variable lighting conditions, battery life awareness, cellular signal management, and the specific challenge of latency perception in live TV buffering.
Developed a buffering indicator system that managed user expectations without breaking the watching experience.
Ideation
Interaction Model:
TV first. Unlike most phone apps at the time that displayed a menu after start-up, the goal was to emulate the TV watching experience, which meant playing the last view channel up first, immediately on power up.
Maximize screen space for entertainment. Use motion to hint at interactions. Swiping up or down would move the temporarily displayed channel bar with the finger, and change to the next channel. Tapping the screen would display or hide the program info.
Use hardware interaction for global navigation and functions. There was one physical button on the front which toggled the TV schedule (menu). Physical volume buttons and a power/battery level button (with LED behavior that I specified) were also available.
Activation Flow:
Device side of activation, designed in coordination with the activation portal. Informed the user of how/where to go to continue activation, along with the state displays for unsubscribed vs subscribed service.
Prototyping
Context:
I ran usability testing on a software prototype of the UI in a usability lab, while live streaming the testing to others on the team who were in a different building. I helped run additional focus group testing on the hardware form factor.
Usability Feedback:
Primary swipe interaction was quickly discovered with most participants. Some found it quickly when touching the screen and noticing the channel bar move.
One participant had trouble discovering swiping, and went to the channel guide to change channels.
All users preferred the TV first approach, immediately playing content upon starting the device.
Users expressed interest in using it for live sports and news mostly.
Overall, usability was intuitive and interactions were easily discoverable.
Users expressed a desire for more channel options (roughly 8-12 were available at the time).
User expressed concern over the limited number of cities where they'd be able to get signal.
Users wanted on-demand content that could be stored and watched later.
Hardware Feedback:
Focus group participants liked the size and smooth feel of the design. It was pocketable.
They were happy with the attached foldable stand and ability to use headphones.
4
Delivery - Summary
Led and managed a cross-functional design team through the full 1-year development cycle.
Established design review cadence, documentation standards, and handoff protocols.
Coordinated across hardware, firmware, content licensing, and marketing teams.
The product launched nationally through major cities.
Result
FLO TV continued to provide service for several years, exploring the area of on-demand content and data-related apps that could supplement the live broadcast capabilities, even going so far as to investigate a deal with the NFL for showing local games. Ultimately, the FLO TV service was shuttered as cellular data started showing promise as a more affordable alternative. Licensing costs mounted and began to outweigh the return on investment. The dedicated cellular spectrum owned by FLO TV for broadcasting content was eventually sold off.
Lessons Learned
Sometimes technology evolves faster than expected, and user behavior and expectation evolve with it. There was such a massive investment into the technology, it mandated trying to find a problem to the developed solution, which was to make broadcast TV with a very limited number of channels at QVGA resolution appealing to millions of consumers.
