Viewmate ios
Social Guide FOR Live TV & Streaming
Discovery · Personal schedules · Recommendations · Live chat
Year
2013-15
Tools
Sketch, Axure, InVision, Adobe Photoshop, Localytics
Role
Founder & Lead Product Designer
UX Research Lead
Deliverables
Product maps & interaction flows
Navigation & information structure
Wireframes & interactive prototypes
iOS design system
High-fidelity interface design
Research & behavioral analysis
Summary
Viewmate was a social TV platform that combined live programming, personal schedules, recommendations, and real-time conversation in one iOS experience.
I designed the product end to end, defining how shows, episodes, schedules, buddies, reminders, ratings, recommendations, and chats related across the app. The same program could be discovered in the guide, added to a schedule, shared with a friend, viewed within a buddy’s schedule, or opened as the context for a live conversation.
Problem
Television discovery, planning, and conversation were fragmented across channel guides, reminder tools, messaging apps, and social networks. Viewers could find programming or discuss it with friends, but had no shared place to see what was airing, remember what they intended to watch, and engage around the same program.
The product needed to support both individual viewing habits and social behavior without reducing the experience to either a conventional TV guide or a general-purpose social feed.
Research & iteration
I conducted two moderated focus groups and six demographic and psychographic fit interviews, translating the findings into four initial personas. After the private beta, I surveyed 50 participants and used Localytics behavioral data to identify navigation problems, underused features, and onboarding friction.
Findings informed repeated interface changes and a guided tutorial focused on the points where new users were most likely to become stuck.
Methods:
2 moderated focus groups
6 target-user interviews
4 personas
50-person private-beta survey
Production behavior analysis
Product Interaction Maps
I mapped the available actions and decision paths within the schedule and buddy experiences, including recurring reminders, visibility controls, recommendations, chat creation, profile actions, and transitions between show information and personal schedules.
These maps helped identify repeated steps, clarify where program context needed to persist, and establish consistent interaction patterns before moving into detailed interface design.
Design Approach
I maintained the product’s Sketch design system and owned the complete UX and interface design across the iOS app. I used product maps to define relationships and interaction paths, Sketch for wireframes and interface design, InVision for rapid concept testing, and Axure for more complex interactive prototypes.
Product Model
Shared program context
- Shows and episodes served as shared objects across the product. A program could appear in the guide, a personal schedule, a buddy’s schedule, a recommendation, a notification, or a live chat while retaining the same underlying context.
Live guide and discovery
- Designed a channel-based program guide alongside a broader discovery experience for trending shows, live events, and socially relevant programming.
Personal and shared schedules
- Allowed users to build schedules up to two weeks in advance, set reminders and recurrence preferences, and view what their buddies planned to watch.
Recommendations and social signals
- Integrated buddy activity throughout the product so viewers could see who had scheduled a program, send recommendations, and discover programming through people they knew.
Program-linked conversation
- Connected individual programs directly to one-to-one and group conversations, allowing users to discuss live content without manually recreating the viewing context in a separate messaging app.
Extended live context
- Explored contextual features such as sports matchup previews, ratings, and live-viewing indicators that enriched the program experience without requiring users to leave the app.
Key Product Surfaces
The broader product extended shared program context across discovery, episode details, buddy activity, personal schedules, notifications, and live-event information.
