NBCUniversal was scheduled to launch its streaming app, Peacock, in July 2020. The big problem: it was already a saturated market. On top of that subscription fatigue, consumers were experiencing decision paralysis, and nearly infinite scrolling, spending 10 minutes on average each day to find content to watch. NBCU needed to find a way to bring all its content together into one streaming service that would stand out from its peers.

We decided to bring the best of TV to the best of streaming, creating a streaming service that was as easy and enjoyable as watching TV.

To ease decision paralysis, we created a Channels mode that allowed users to lean back and watch passively, just like they would with traditional TV. To help viewers keep a pulse on day-to-day events, we created Trending. And for traditional on-demand content, we blew out our Browse experience to incorporate curated collections and algorithmically driven recommendations for our content library.

The design approach was focused around four key principles: physicality, clarity & consistency, progressive disclosure, and frictionless experience to content.

Physicality: Mirror the physical properties of the material world. Everything comes from a certain place and goes back to the same place. Nothing has magical properties.

Clarity & Consistency: Fewer colors. More contrast. Simplicity. Bigger and clearer is better than small and granular. We believe if it can be small and gray it shouldn't be there. Glancing at something should be enough to understand it.

Progressive Disclosure: A way of disclosing information. Fewer and more certain choices are better than plentiful but harder choices. Users should just be presented with enough information to make the next choice, never more nor less than that.

Frictionless experience to content: The product is nothing more than a tool to organize and bring that content to people in the best, most intuitive and most frictionless way.

All of this rolled out over one app that felt seamless across 12 different platforms, from web to connected TV devices to native apps for Android and iOS.

And we did it all in under a year.