I was brought in by DirecTV’s Digital Innovation Lab (DLab) to co-design and prototype a VR media player for that would allow customers to access their entire library of live, video, and ticketed content. Given my experience in rapid prototyping, they wanted my experience in helping them accelerate the process by leading a skunkworks team that could ride the line between corporate oversight whilst making use of it’s vast resources. The app was an idea provided by DLab that we took it’s conception, did competitive research on, wireframed, prototyped, and built a polished MVP for an executive pitch.

Functional iteration on device in GearVR

Design

A primary goal of this project was to compliment DirecTV’s existing design language while introducing a set of spatial interactions that were accepted within the current VR world. Working in close collaboration with a staff designer, we wanted to create an intuitive and engaging user interface while rapidly prototyping our concepts effectively. Through this iteration and feedback process, we ensured the application was both exceptionally useful, functional, and user-friendly all while being executed on ahead on schedule.

Another goal was reducing user friction. One of VR’s pain points has generally been it’s barrier to entry, a laundry list that consists of clearing out a space, getting your controllers, putting it on, and navigating the OS to an app which may have a completely foreign UX vs what the OS has accustomed you to. In addition to ensuing this could cater to a low-end device, we chose to remove reliance on controllers and focused on a gaze and single touch UX that would let anyone sit or lay down and enjoy content as quickly and easily as possible.

Our demo device targeted the GearVR, given an internal partnership with Samsung, and this led us to explore a UX that at minimum, could function as gaze-only, while enhanced with Samsung, would make use of a one handed swipe gesture built into the headset that would be an effective way to both browse content, scrub the media player, and perform other interactions that someone would find both immensely useful while retaining it’s comfort and ease of use.

We made use of the Samsung GearVR’s built-in DPad on the device to swipe through the media browser easily while also being able to scrub their content without needing to find a controller. Ease of use was priority in designing this.

Engineering

Some of the features we set out for the MVP were:

Fully functional media browser and scrubbable player
User login and session access
Support for 2D, 3D, 360 videos as well as streaming user or region-gated content such as sports, live events, etc.
Media Browser would be populated from and have it’s content validated and streamed via the same API that DirecTV uses for their satellite and streaming services
Content could be categorized and lists made
Showcase a few environments to watch in, such as a blank space, space, or a DirecTV themed theatre

As this was built in Unity, we used a variety of libraries to ease development such as the various tools in Meta’s Oculus SDK, Curved UI, AV Pro, as well as a lot of custom scripts both I and a staff developer built to assist in handling the option of Gaze and Swipe for the UI as well as ensuring we could populate UI elements with preview content and securely access the steaming media through DirecTV’s internal API.

This experience underscored my capacity to guide a project from conception to completion, illustrating my competency in not only envisioning designs that resonate with users but also basing those designs in a reality towards a finished product. For those seeking to enhance their product's UX, I offer a professional approach to design and prototyping, committed to delivering solutions that genuinely address user needs while having a deep familiarity of the pipeline to bring it there.

Client: AT&T DirecTV, Samsung
Tools: Illustrator, Figma, Unity, AV Pro, Oculus SDK