My involvement with Channel 4 goes way back to 2013 when the app was called 4OD. The following year, I helped to launch the first iteration of the All 4 app on iPhone and iPad.

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I became the Lead UX/UI Designer for iOS and managed business as usual. In 2018, Channel 4 relaunched All 4 with a new, updated All 4 brand and all new look and feel for every platform. I was heavily involved in the redesign from the ground up.

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The requirement for the iOS platform was to make use of native elements for ease of development. It involved staying on top of the new Apple releases and also being in close contact with the development team and business analysts to ensure we were creating something that could easily adapt to new phone releases.

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I also worked very closely with the product team. Being in sync with the product manager ensured that we were providing the best functionality.

 

User testing was essential to understand how users were interacting with the app but also on other platforms such as Android and big screen.

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In order to stay consistent across platforms, creating a library was very important to the All 4 team. I was tasked to understand this library but also work conceptually to introduce new functionality and new library elements that could be used across the app and potentially across the various platforms.

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All 4 Case Study: All 4+

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The product team within All 4 was keen to see low-fi designs rather than wireframes. So quite often I would receive requirements for new functionality, do a quick sketch and jump into design to work out the details. 

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I would then go back and forth with the product managers, designers in the team and developers to determine how best to create and build this piece of functionality, not only on iOS but also on other platforms such as Android and Big Screen and Web. Once we were all happy with one or two directions, these would be mocked up in prototypes and put in front of users in formal or informal user testing sessions.

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The All 4+ in-app payment project was exactly as described. I worked very closely with the system architects and iOS development team to understand the data that would be coming back from Apple and what we needed to do within the app to make it work seamlessly and easily for users. The key for users was to ensure that this was almost a no-brainer to sign up and just as easy to do - no hidden frustrations. I worked with the content team to determine how best to promote the in-app purchase functionality and came up with varying ways that this could be done from custom banners to simple promos. In the end we went with promos as we all felt it was less jarring for users. It was always a group group effort getting projects like these live and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

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Types of user testing at All 4

 

All 4 knows their users very well due to the importance of user testing. User testing has aided in decisions from complicated new functionality to complex layout decisions. User testing can range from formal user testing facilities to an online user testing website to something more homegrown. 

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An example of a very complicated type of functionality that we implemented was incorporating watching live throughout the entire app, and not just in its own silo. This would allow the user to see that the show is live when they go to the programme page. From that page, they can watch it live and restart it from the beginning. This initially was quite confusing to users in user testing. They often did not understand the meaning of the call to actions and didn't know what to expect. We ended up doing several iterations to find the correct naming and placement of the call to actions and episode listing. This is now live and working great.

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More homegrown tests we did were to determine if we should even add a piece of functionality. For example, a member of management wanted to include the ability to delete shows from their Continue Watching section on the homepage, rather than going into their My 4 page. We mocked this up into prototypes for iOS and Android and did informal user testing within All 4 with a bribe of a muffin and coffee. It was determined that this was not an issue for the vast majority of those that we spoke to, so we decided to not invest in that piece of functionality.

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