Design transformation
of Verizon Fios TV Mobile app.

Auditing the divergence

I audited the current state of Mobile and Web side by side — interaction patterns, components, and user journeys. Verizon provided an extensive repository of user feedback, and one observation summed up the cost cleanly:

Users were effectively learning two ways to operate the same product.

— user feedback, surfaced from a Verizon focus-group workshop.

The design elements were fragmented across legacy Sketch files and informal Google Drive folders — no single source of truth, no scalable component library, no template layer. I decided to create a Figma-based source of truth — the UMW Design System.

App, Web, and the TV product

Mobile and browser were mirroring the TV build without hardware awareness — the same patterns, the same navigation, regardless of screen. But, what works on a living-room display doesn’t translate cleanly to a phone or a laptop, and the product was paying for the assumption.

Verizon’s focus-group studies pointed that users were leaning on Mobile to discover and manage content, with the TV remaining the primary watch surface. The goal framed itself, a platform, and device-aware restructure, reading not as a copy of the TV experience but as a genuine companion to it.

Organising the work cross-teams and time zones

Daily collaboration with developers and Verizon product owners to support, maintain, and deliver against the evolving needs of a live, customer-facing product.

I mentored and guided new hires and more junior team members. When Verizon opened a new US design branch mid-project, I onboarded all new starters and ran the workstream across multiple time zones, strengthening team capability, aligning on design standards, and keeping delivery consistent.

Unified IA across Mobile and Web

Mapping a single information architecture across both platforms, aligning hierarchy, and terminology.

Rebuilding the design system

I created the design system in Figma, built from the ground up — structured branching, atomic principles, and a two-library model: components, and templates that the components feed into.

The template layer allowed us to iterate the experience faster, accelerate redesign, and shorten the path to dev handover.

Wireframes and user-journey alignment

Using the established design system, we wireframed the unified IA — reconciling the divergent flows across Mobile and Web into a single set of hardware-aware journey patterns.

Inclusive design — embedded accessibility

User feedback flagged an accessibility gap, so I embedded the accessibility rules into the system directly. I led the initiative, established a brand-new connection between Verizon’s accessibility, design and stakeholders teams. I created an additional workflow to ensure that every unified design (current and future) met WCAG AA compliance standards and remained inclusive for people with physical disabilities and limitations.

Working closely with product owners and App and Web engineering teams through live iterations, I kept the design system, accessibility, and the handover documentation in line with delivery.

DVR — the USP losing prominence

Live TV on the go, meant to be the main focus of the mobile app, was buried inside the product. I mapped where DVR surfaced across the experience, and the only entry points were a rail partway down the home page and a line item in Settings (3–4 taps away from app opening screen).

User testing and qualitative research

Working with Verizon’s user testing department, I ran sessions focused on DVR awareness, and discoverability.

A group of users didn’t know the Mobile app gave them DVR access at all.

— testing manager, Verizon; finding from Verizon’s user testing sessions.

They were leaning more on features like purchasing, renting, or adding to Watchlist.

User-curated content

Synthesising research and audit, a broader pattern emerged: there was more user-curated content across the experience — DVR, Purchases, Rentals, Watchlist, and Downloads. “Downloads” was an underused feature in the top-level menu (TLM).

They shared the same mental model — content the user has chosen and owns. It led me to push the product further, creating a full user’s curated content library, rather than just lifting DVR up.

“My Stuff” — consolidating the curated streams

A new top-level menu section that brought DVR, Purchases, Rentals, Watchlist, and Downloads under one banner. User’s library, with DVR management as the main feature, replaced the navbar item “Downloads”. It gave the USP the visibility the business case needed.

IA iterations and hierarchy

I iterated the information architecture to establish a clear hierarchy — DVR management at the top with most prominence, with the remaining items sitting under. It was a structure implemented across all the Mobile app breakpoints.

Landing-page design and at-a-glance cards

I designed the new landing page, surfacing essential information at a glance through landing-page cards. It was prioritising DVR management on the go: recordings ready to watch, content expiring, what’s currently capturing, and the management options sat alongside it.

Initial planning and discovery

Collab session with the product owners, framing what a next-generation Verizon TV experience needed to be. We aligned on the ambition early: a true mobile companion to the set-top box, designed for the next generation of Verizon customers. We also were green-lit to make radical changes where the current product was outdated.

I scoped the work into UX and UI lanes, structured a sprint cadence, and set the initial plan: app-first, scaling to web once the mobile vision was proven, with positioning anchored to the refreshed Verizon brand.

Competitor benchmark and user analysis

I ran a competitor benchmark across the video streaming industry and adjacent categories, focusing on four areas: content discovery, content variety across linear and on-demand, personalisation beyond data-driven recommendation, and end-to-end look of streamlined experience.

What users were telling us

I scrutinised the most authoritative streaming and TV-industry studies of recent years — including Nielsen’s State of Play reports — alongside Verizon’s own archive of user interviews and testing transcripts.

The same theme came back across every source: people are saturated with options but starved of something that feels made for the way they actually watch.

I’m overwhelmed by choice and nothing feels truly personalised to the way I actually watch.

— recurring sentiment, surfaced across the reviewed studies and user interviews.

Workshops and user sessions

I ran personas-led usability and feedback sessions, as well as audited and categorized the whole experience by what resonated with users most. Each method was shaping a specific design decision.

3 pillars of video product and bucketing/categorising of features

The findings pointed toward focusing on user-relevant content, simplifying high-impact features, and an increasing need for immersive technologies (including generative AI) to enhance engagement and drive innovation. From there, every existing and proposed feature was bucketed against three named pillars.

Personas anchoring the work

I constructed three personas based on the research synthesis and user feedback sessions. Each is defined by how much they know going in, and by the balance of breadth and depth they value when they consume content.

Information architecture

Simplified structure with emphasis on enhancing engagement, prioritising relevant, user-tailored content and embracing technological innovations. This approach aims to provide a more comprehensive yet consolidated user experience.

Outlining the experience

I sketched the dashboard’s hero space, profile characteristics, channel selection, and the principal navigation entry points across Search, Home, Discover, and My Stuff, pinning down the structural moves and shaping the user journey.

Prototyping and visual direction

The prototypes proved out the motion and rhythm of exploration and discovery, and the structural flow. The final design exploration tested the structural and visual language end-to-end: immersive content moments, content-detail layouts, and the AI-powered Fios Search Assistant in a single coherent system.