Linear TV Player for Set-Top Box
Designing a lean-back TV experience for a remote — not a mouse.
Time-Shift Playback
10-Foot UI
Set-Top Box
10-Foot UI Design
Remote Navigation Design
Constraint-Driven Design
Usability Testing Analysis
My Role & Responsibilities
Sole designer, end-to-end interaction design
Interaction and UI designer on the project, working directly with a Product Owner and STB development team.
Key decisions drew on usability recordings of real TV users — findings that directly shaped the player's visual language.
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Interaction Design
Designed the full interaction model: playback controls, time-shift timeline, channel switching, and language track selection — all mapped to remote navigation. -
Navigation Architecture
Defined focus management, screen hierarchy, and key-press flows to keep navigation predictable and shallow for couch-distance use. -
Constraint-Driven Design
Scoped and simplified UI patterns to meet STB hardware limits — dropping visually rich features like channel preview carousels and translucent overlays in favour of patterns the hardware could render responsively. -
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Worked closely with the Product Owner and STB developers to validate technical feasibility and align design decisions with platform constraints.
The Challenge
A full TV experience on constrained hardware — operated from a sofa
The player had to handle everything a modern viewer expects from linear TV: live playback, time-shift across seven days, channel switching, and multi-language audio and subtitles.
Consumer set-top boxes are not high-performance devices. Every UI decision had to work within strict hardware limits — and be operable with a TV remote from the couch.
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STB Performance Limits
Designing a responsive, fluid UI within the strict CPU and memory constraints of consumer set-top box hardware. -
Remote-Only Navigation
Every interaction had to work with a standard TV remote — d-pad, OK, and a handful of function keys. No touch, no hover, no secondary inputs. -
Time-Shift Complexity
Presenting seven days of broadcast history in a way that feels natural and intuitive, without overwhelming the viewer or requiring manual input. -
Lean-Back Context
UI legibility, focus states, and navigation depth all had to work at a viewing distance of several metres — designed for relaxed, passive engagement.
Preview
Designing TV navigation without a touchscreen
Every design decision in this project started from the same question: can a viewer do this comfortably with a TV remote, from their sofa, without thinking about it? Here is how that constraint shaped the core features.
Controls that disappear when you don't need them
The primary playback UI had to be immediately accessible and immediately dismissible. Viewers watching linear TV don't want a persistent overlay — but they do need instant feedback when they reach for the remote.
Usability recordings of real TV users made two things non-negotiable: type had to be large enough to read without leaning forward, and the focused element had to be immediately obvious — a sharp, unambiguous highlight that required no scanning. These weren't aesthetic choices; they were functional requirements observed failing in the wild.
Seven days of TV, navigable with four keys
Time-shift was the most complex feature to design. The platform stored seven days of broadcast history per channel — giving viewers access to an enormous content library without any VOD interface.
The challenge was representing time as a navigable dimension using only d-pad navigation. The timeline had to be scannable at a glance, spatially consistent, and quick to jump through — without requiring the viewer to count or calculate.
Instant channel changes — no dead ends
Channel switching on a remote-controlled player needs to feel instant and effortless. Delays, loading states, and ambiguous feedback are amplified on a TV screen viewed from a distance.
I designed the switching flow to minimise perceived latency and provide clear in-progress feedback — so viewers always knew whether the device was responding, even under the STB's processing constraints.
Audio and subtitle selection without leaving the player
Multi-language support is not an edge case for a TV platform — it is a baseline expectation. The selection UI had to match that: lightweight and in-context, not buried in a settings menu.
Shipped and deployed
A full linear TV player — live.
The player shipped and was deployed to end users. The design delivered on its core requirements: full time-shift navigation, channel switching, and language selection — all operable with a standard TV remote by users of varying technical confidence.
Shipped to Production
The player was fully implemented and deployed to real users on consumer set-top box hardware in the target market.
Lean-Back First
Every interaction was validated against a remote-only, couch-distance use model — informed by real usability recordings of senior TV users.
Time-Shift Navigation
Delivered a seven-day broadcast timeline navigable with four d-pad keys — no VOD interface required.
Performance-Aware Design
UI complexity was scoped to the limits of the STB hardware — keeping the experience responsive without sacrificing the core feature set.
Designing for the remote.
The best TV UI is the one you stop noticing.
This project was a good reminder that interaction design is always context design. The same feature that feels effortless on a touchscreen can become a friction point when the only input is a d-pad and the user is three metres away.
Grounding every decision in the lean-back context — and in actual footage of real users navigating a TV interface — made the difference between designing what looked right in a tool and designing what worked in a living room.
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