Founded on the frustration of not knowing what to watch or trawling through video content on Youtube, Vimeo, and other services, Rheo provides an intuitive way for users to discover videos relevant to their mood, tastes and watching habits. Hydric Media was contracted to port their popular Apple TV app to a responsive web experience, in line with a native iOS app underway internally (now released), and also to update their corporate online website inline with an updated brand direction.
Challenges
The desire to extend their Apple TV app to the web was driven by internal business needs to leverage user engagement through sharing of videos from their Apple TV and iOS apps to in turn attract new users via social networks. With this in mind, we set the goal to create a video playback experience that retained the elegance of their already released Apple TV app, while feeling as native as possible no matter the device it was opened on. The site also had to support two modes of playback — portrait, and landscape.
Above left: channel menu. Above middle: fullscreen playback. Above right: coming up next section.
Solutions
My involvement saw me familiarise myself with their core video discovery experience, and then wireframe initial concepts for mobile and desktop video playback as well as their new corporate website.
Above: final designs for mobile video playback and fullscreen layout.
Collaborating with visual design and engineering staff, we ensured our solution adhered to a robust set of layout rules to facilitate compatibility across various devices, browsers, and screen resolutions. We also validated some non-standard device-specific functionalities such as in-line autoplay of video on iOS Safari and a landscape-responsive player that switched to a fullscreen layout automatically on device rotation.
Rheo launched their web player alongside the release of their iOS app in 2017. Follow the link below to start watching.
Above: designs for desktop video playback, standard and fullscreen layout.
Details
Client — Rheo
Agency — Hydric Media
Platform — Web
Role — Product Lead
Featured in
