go90

Improving the UX for Verizon’s video app.

Part of a broader industry battle within the increasingly lucrative mobile video space, Verizon’s go90 was an ambitious, well-funded video app aimed primarily at millennials. (The app’s name referred to rotating your phone 90 degrees to watch a video.)

As a so-called OTT, or “over the top,” platform, go90 was an attempt to do an end run around traditional cable and satellite TV arrangements, offering a mix of syndicated and original shows distributed via apps and the web. 

n 2015, the go90 platform had already been in development for a couple of years — and was nearing launch — when Verizon hired the digital agency AKQA to overhaul the app’s design/UX and plot a roadmap for its post-launch evolution. I joined AKQA’s UX team as a freelance content strategist to help shape the platform’s future experience. 

Working closely with AKQA’s UX and design teams, I tackled content challenges both macro and micro. The platform would ultimately offer hundreds of shows and thousands of episodes in a wide range of genres and categories, and it would all need to be comprehensible on a mobile screen. What kinds of content pathways and editorial formats would put the right content in front of the right users at the right times — and continuously daisy-chain them to more? What sorts of content cues and labels would increase clarity, consistency, and fun as users moved through the experience?

I wrangled big spreadsheets of shows to reorient the user-facing taxonomies to make them more intuitive; developed a lively editorial approach for video channels and playlists; and helped shape the content details on a screen-by-screen basis.