One of my first tasks as the Director of User Experience and User Interface for Time Warner Cables Converged Technologies Group was to create the next generation video navigator to be built for their leased devices. The requirements were that it had to continue to use some of the traditional metaphors that customers were accustomed to like a channel guide, an on-screen keyboard for search, information banners, and an On Demand channel. It also needed to be navigated with the remote control that was currently in the field.
The premise behind this design was that the video was truly the main feature of the experience, and that the content should speak for itself. We really wanted to avoid UI for UI sake. So we started with the video player, and the product pages; the actual presentation of the content. Once we had that solid, we moved outwards into what the user needed to discover that content.
