Making the jump from mobile to TV
Our research told us that there would be unique perks of watching Shorts on the big screen. They're easier to watch with others, and the larger screen makes it a more comfortable viewing experience. But the design challenge remained: how could we preserve the essence of Shorts with vertical videos on wide screen TVs? We started by creating three very different design concepts:
We wanted to know if the unique feel of Shorts could be conveyed in our conventional video player (Option A) or if it should be customized to better fill the blank spaces on either side of the video (Option B). We also considered a divergent option — the “Jukebox” style (Option C)— where multiple Shorts would fill the screen at the same time, taking full advantage of the TV screen’s additional space.
After another round of research, feedback showed that the joy of Shorts gets lost in the consistent video player (Option A), and the Jukebox style (Option C) strayed too far from the essence of Shorts, which features one video at a time. The customized Shorts experience delivers the best of both worlds: a clean design while making the most of the wide screen’s additional space.
We also learned that viewers wanted to be in the driver’s seat of the viewing experience and were happy to use the remote to manually advance to the next Short rather than have the feed autoplay. This was unusual. Typically we find that level of interactivity can be tedious with a remote, but in this case, short-form video is unique. Research indicated that people want to take charge of the viewing experience — just like with Shorts on mobile — and even expected it.